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Isomalt Sugar Art
Mirrograph Cookies

Mandala cookies decorated with royal icing and isomalt, inspired by the Mirrograph 2 app.

Before these mirrograph cookies I used to design my mandalas with Inkscape, a vector program. I quite like doing this kind of graphic work on a computer. But when I was faced with some long commute time on a train, I started looking for mandala design apps on my mobile and found Mirrograph 2.

This app lets you draw mandalas, or a sort thereof, by just doodling on your screen. You can choose many different settings, and the resulting mandalas are never the same... quite fascinating really.

So I saved some of these mandalas to my computer. And all I had to do then is trace these with Inkscape, which is a free vector program. I will show you how to use this program for such tracing work in a video someday.

To fit in all the details, the mirrograph cookies had to be rather large, about 20 cm or 8 inches. And I had to make them as transfers, as it would have taken too long to trace them again with a projector or other form of design transfer. Plus these transfers are never as exact as I wanted them. Yes, I'm a bit of a perfectionist, LOL. But I think you kind of guessed that already. It's not all that bad though... It does have its advantages too ;-).

Mirrograph Cookie 1

Click on any image for a closeup look.

A large mandala cookie decorated with royal icing and isomalt. Piped as a transfer via a template (download available) for precision.
With royal icing and isomalt decorated mandala cookie; piped as transfer, thus can be used for a cookie or as a cake topper.

This is my first Mirrograph cookie. If you look closer, there are a lot of places where the royal icing openings are very small/tight, around 1-2 mm. Dribbling isomalt into such tiny spaces is possible with a small pin. The smaller the needle the smaller isomalt droplets you can pick up.

The cookie has a star opening in the center to let the light flood through the stained glass part.

If you'd like to give this a try, you can download the Mirrograph-1 Template.


Photo showing steps 1-4 of the process of designing and decorating Mirrograph mandala cookie 1.
Photo showing steps 5-7 of the process of designing and decorating Mirrograph mandala cookie 1.
  1. This, of course, is the original mandala made in the free Mirrograph 2 app. It gives you quite a few different settings to choose from such as brush size, effect, color, and symmetries.

    There are over 25 effects. One can use more than one effect in a single design. Even if you don't ever think of using this app to render a mirrograph into a cookie, you might still want to check it out, as it can be quite relaxing to just doodle around in it :-).

  2. This is the drawing made with Inkscape. I traced only one section, of course, then just copied, pasted, and rotated/moved it to connect with a neighboring section. The math for this is very simple. The tracing takes some practice as one works with bezier curves.

  3. Here you can see the piped center, ready to be filled in with isomalt.

  4. This is the isomalt filled-in middle part. For a stained glass effect, one uses the flat, neat underside, as the fill-in side can get pretty messy with such small openings.

  5. The piped outer part.

  6. The outer part filled in with royal icing.

  7. Both parts combined into one large transfer, ready to be placed onto a cookie or cake, or hung in a window? that might work, as isomalt's melting temperature is around 140 deg. Celsius, if it's not place into direct sunlight.

If you'd like to try your hands on piping this mirrograph, you can download its template. Once you've piped it, you don't have to fill it with isomalt like I did, but can use flood consistency icing. (Isomalt tutorials will have to wait for quite some time, as I don't have the right video setup for it at the moment.)


Mirrograph Cookie 2

Click on any image for a closeup look.

Mandala cookie decorated with royal icing and isomalt, inspired by the Mirrograph 2 app.
With royal icing and isomalt decorated mandala cookie; piped as transfer, thus can be used for a cookie or as a cake topper.

In this Mirrograph cookie I filled in parts of the outer design with isomalt as well. This makes for a nice pietra dura effect. The outer part is laying on the cookie, and no light can come through there. The center of the cookie has part cut out to achieve a stained glass look.

But I did flood the cookie with white icing underneath the outer part to have the isomalt lay on top of a light surface for obvious reasons.

If you'd like to give this a try, you can download the Mirrograph-2 Template.


Photo showing steps 1-4 of the process of designing and decorating Mirrograph mandala cookie 2.
Photo showing steps 5-6 of the process of designing and decorating Mirrograph mandala cookie 2.
  1. The original Mirrograph design.

  2. The design traced in Inkscape.

  3. The middle part piped and parts filled in with royal icing, ready to receive the isomalt.

  4. The middle part filled in with isomalt and turned around to show the flat underside.

  5. The outer part piped with royal icing, and ready to be filled with isomalt for a pietra dura effect.

  6. The out and inner parts combined to be place onto a cookie or cake, if on a cookie, then it should be placed on the flat underside of it.

I love how these mirrograph cookies turned out, and maybe will make a video of the whole process at some time, should I get enough requests for it.


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