Love Plus One Baby Shower Cookies

Ready for more Love +1? Earlier this week we shared ideas for the adorable and immensely practical Onesies®-themed baby shower. (An ideal shower theme, in my opinion!) Today we'll take the same design from the tiny bunting and turn it into shaped cookies and fondant for cookie or cupcake toppers.

Of course you can buy the little bodysuit-shaped cookie cutters in several sizes if you'd rather not go to the trouble to make your own. Use the mini cutters from Foose to cut out fondant for cupcake toppers or to add to the sides or top of a cake. Larger cutters can be used to create sugar cookies, which you can top with fondant cut in the same shape, or add pearls or fondant "buttons" to dress up cookies with a simple icing.

I really wanted to try making this particular cookie shape, so I got a kit to make my own cookie cutters (affiliate link). The kit comes with everything you need, including thin metal and the tools to shape it, along with a special adhesive to hold the edges of the cutter together.

I didn't know what to expect, but this was very easy to make. You can see below that I printed out the shape I wanted to use as my guide, then used the different tools as well as my fingers to bend the metal into shape. The photo below left shows it about halfway through, and below right is the finished cutter. I did as they recommended and made sure I was joining the two ends of the metal together on one of the straight sides. I clamped it and baked in the oven to cure the adhesive (don't worry, this is all described in the directions that come with the kit). An hour later my new cutter was ready to wash and use!

This was a project of "firsts" for me because I had never made fondant before, either. I decided that marshmallow fondant would be a great one to experiment with, and used this recipe from Wilton. Again, this could not have been easier! I added a bit of red food color to make pink fondant, mixed up a batch of sugar cookie dough, then rolled out and cut both cookies and fondant tops before baking my cookies.





Make sure to chill your dough well before rolling out so your cookies won't spread as much as mine did. As soon as you pull the cookies from the oven, top them with the fondant so it melts a bit and sticks to the cookies. Then you can decorate them more with icing or additional fondant accents, or leave them plain as I did (see at the very bottom below).

I really enjoyed making these cookies, though they're not as fancy as some of the others I've seen online. Firefly Confections makes really pretty cookies, and I like these from CakeJournal.com, too. They'd make terrific party favors for the Love +1 shower (more ideas coming soon), as well as a pretty addition to the dessert table.

Do you make your own cookies for a party, or do you trust it to the professionals?