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 ;-).
Click on any image for a closeup look.
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.
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.)
Click on any image for a closeup look.
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.
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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