There are two routes to a sharp, professional-looking character cookie. One involves piping practice, three consistencies of royal icing and a steadier hand than most of us have at 11pm the night before a party. The other is fondant. If you want to know how to decorate cookies with fondant, the short version is this: cut it with the same cutter you used for the dough, stick it down thinly, and you are most of the way there. The longer version — what to stick it down with, how to stop it sweating in the tin, and how to add faces without a piping bag — is below.
Why fondant is the shortcut
Royal icing is a lovely medium and we are not trying to talk you out of it — our guide to flooding cookies with royal icing exists for a reason. But it asks a lot: two separate consistencies, six to twelve hours of drying time between stages, and the fine motor control to trace a dinosaur's spine without wobbling. Fondant asks for none of that. You roll it, cut it, lay it on, and the surface comes out smooth, matte and even in about ninety seconds per cookie. It is firm enough to handle within a couple of hours, it survives party bags, and every cookie in the batch looks identical — which matters more than you would think when twenty children are comparing.
It is also the easiest route to detailed character sets, because the hardest part of icing a character cookie is keeping the icing inside the outline. With fondant, the cutter draws the outline for you.
The one-cutter trick
Bake your cookies, then cut your fondant with the same cutter. That is the whole trick. Fondant does not spread, shrink or rise, so the shape you cut is the shape you get, and it matches the baked cookie edge to edge — provided the cookie held its shape in the oven. If yours tend to slump, start with a dough that holds its shape and the fit takes care of itself.
A few practical notes:
- Roll the fondant to 2–3mm, roughly 1/8 inch. Thicker looks clumsy and tastes of nothing but sugar; thinner tears when you lift it.
- Dust the worktop lightly with icing sugar or cornflour (cornstarch). Heavy dusting dries the fondant out and leaves white patches on dark colours.
- Press the cutter straight down and lift straight up. Twisting drags the edge out of shape.
- Move the cut shape on a palette knife slid fully underneath, not with your fingers.
- A sharp, deep cutter wall cuts fondant even more cleanly than dough — the printed edge on our PLA cutters leaves no ragged rim, which is half the professional look sorted before you have decorated anything.
On quantities: 500g of fondant (a little over 1lb) covers roughly 20–25 cookies of 7–8cm (about 3 inches) rolled at 2mm. Buy pre-coloured fondant for red and black rather than kneading gel colour into white; a true black takes an enormous amount of colour and effort, and your hands will look like you lost a fight with a printer cartridge.
How to decorate cookies with fondant, step by step
- Cool the cookies completely — at least 30 minutes, ideally an hour. Fondant laid on a warm cookie softens, sags and traps steam underneath.
- Knead the fondant for 30–60 seconds until it feels like soft plasticine.
- Roll it to 2–3mm on a light dusting of icing sugar.
- Cut with the same cutter you used for the dough — straight down, no twist.
- Brush the cookie with a thin, even layer of adhesive (table below), right to the edges.
- Lay the fondant on top and smooth from the centre outwards with your palm or a fondant smoother. If the cookie spread a millimetre in the oven, coax the soft fondant over to the edge with a fingertip — nobody will ever know.
- Leave the cookies uncovered for one to two hours so the surface firms before you stack them, bag them or draw on details.
What to stick it down with
Anything slightly tacky works. The common mistake is quantity, not choice: blobs squeeze out at the edges when you press the fondant down and glue the cookie to the box.
Brush the adhesive on thin, like you are painting a wall you do not own.
| Adhesive | How to use it | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Piping gel | Brush a thin film over the whole cookie | The all-rounder — invisible, flavourless, reliable |
| Sieved apricot jam | Warm 1 tablespoon with 1 teaspoon of water, brush on while just warm | A faint sheen and a little flavour under the fondant |
| Thinned royal icing | Spread a scant layer with a palette knife | The strongest hold — cookies that travel or go in party bags |
| Cooled boiled water | The lightest possible brushing | Emergencies only — too much dissolves the fondant surface and it slides |
How to stop fondant sweating
Sweating is condensation. Fondant is mostly sugar, sugar pulls in moisture, and moisture turns the surface shiny, sticky and quick to take fingerprints. Every case we have ever diagnosed comes down to a temperature or humidity swing, so the fixes are all preventative:
- Never refrigerate a fondant-topped cookie. Coming back to room temperature drags the surface through the dew point and it beads like a cold drink in July. These are room-temperature cookies: at around 18–21°C (64–70°F) the biscuit will stale long before the fondant spoils, and both are fine for up to a week.
- Let the fondant firm up uncovered for an hour or two before boxing anything.
- Store in a single layer in a cardboard box or a loosely lidded tin, out of sunlight. Do not press clingfilm onto the surface.
- In sticky weather, work in small batches and keep unused fondant tightly wrapped — the same logic as baking cookies in humid weather.
- If a cookie does sweat, put it somewhere dry and airy and leave it alone. The moisture usually evaporates and the matte finish comes back. Rubbing wet fondant leaves permanent shiny tracks.
Adding detail without a piping bag
This is where fondant earns its keep on character sets.
- Layer it. Cut features from contrasting colours — spots, tummies, manes, flames — with small cutters or a sharp knife, and stick them on with the smallest dab of water on a paintbrush.
- Draw on it. Edible ink pens work beautifully once the surface has firmed — a couple of hours at minimum, the next day for best results. Faces, outlines and stitch marks all become a drawing job, and a slightly wobbly pen line reads as charming where a wobbly piped line reads as a mistake.
- Emboss it. While the fondant is still soft, press in details with whatever is in the drawer: the end of a straw makes smiles and scales, the back of a knife makes fur, a toothpick makes stitching.
- Batch by colour. For a set of characters, lay all the base shapes first, then do every piece of one colour across the whole batch before moving to the next. Six characters for a party of twenty is an evening's work this way, not a weekend's.
Quick fixes
- Cracks or an “elephant skin” texture: the fondant is too dry. Knead in a pea-sized amount of solid vegetable fat and re-roll.
- Sticky, drooping fondant: too warm or too humid. Knead in a little icing sugar and slow down.
- Shapes distorting as you lift them: re-dust the worktop and use the palette knife — under the whole shape, not just one end.
If you are planning a set of your child's favourite characters for a party, our build-your-own bundles let you pick exactly the shapes you need — browse the range in the shop and let the cutter do the outlining.