For most character biscuits, a cutter between about 7.5cm and 9cm tall is the right size. That is big enough for a stamped face to read clearly and small enough that one biscuit is one portion. Go to the smaller end for toddlers, party bags and gift boxes, and to the larger end for bake sales, biscuits you plan to ice, or anything that needs to be noticed from across a table. Our own range sits almost entirely in that window: 63 of our 65 listings are between 7cm and 8.9cm tall, and the other two are deliberately wide, flat shapes.
How cookie cutter sizes are written
Every cutter has two measurements worth knowing: its height, top to bottom, and its width, side to side. Together they describe the rectangle the biscuit fits inside. A product photo on a plain background tells you neither, which is why each of our listings gives the cut height and width, meaning the size of the shape the cutter leaves in the dough.
Depth is a separate number and has nothing to do with the size of the biscuit. All our cutters are 1.5cm deep, which comfortably clears dough rolled to the 4-5mm we recommend.
Height on its own can mislead you. The Octonauts set and the Sonic Character Faces set are almost the same height, 8.5cm and 8.9cm, but the Octonauts crew are 5.5cm wide and the Sonic faces 9cm. One gives you slim standing figures; the other gives round faces that fill a palm. Check both numbers before you choose.
The real spread of sizes in our range
Character cutters tend to cluster around a few sizes, and ours do too. Two heights cover most of the catalogue: 7.6cm (3in) and 8.9cm (3.5in). Widths run from 5.5cm to 10cm, depending on whether the shape is a standing figure, a round face or a wide logo.
| Cut height | Listings | Examples (height x width) |
|---|---|---|
| 5cm | 1 | Pokemon Logo (5 x 10cm) |
| 6.5cm | 1 | Message Plaque (6.5 x 8.9cm) |
| 7 to 7.5cm | 6 | Dinosaurs (7 x 9cm), Minecraft Blocks & Tools (7 x 7cm), South Park (7.5 x 6.5cm) |
| 7.6cm (3in) | 27 | Kawaii Animal Faces (7.6 x 7.6cm), Snoopy & Peanuts (7.6 x 8cm), Stumble Guys (7.6 x 5.5cm) |
| 8 to 8.5cm | 10 | Mickey & Friends (8 x 8cm), Peppa Pig Family (8 x 6.5cm), Octonauts (8.5 x 5.5cm) |
| 8.9cm (3.5in) | 20 | Paw Patrol Faces (8.9 x 8cm), Bluey Family & Friends (8.9 x 6cm), Sonic Character Faces (8.9 x 9cm) |
Within a set, each character is a different shape, so a sitting figure and a standing one will not fill the rectangle in quite the same way. The size on the listing is the one to plan around.
Which size for which job
Toddlers and young children: around 7 to 7.6cm
Small hands do better with a smaller, rounder biscuit: it is easier to hold, quicker to eat, and less of it ends up on the floor. Compact shapes with nothing thin sticking out also survive being grabbed. The Kawaii Animal Faces set (7.6 x 7.6cm) is eight round faces with the features stamped in, and Angry Birds (7.6 x 8cm) has nothing thin to snap off. Smaller biscuits also stretch a batch further, which matters when you are working out how many biscuits to bake per child.
Party bags and gift boxes: measure the container first
Here the container decides. Measure the inside of the bag or box, not the outside, and leave a little room: biscuits spread slightly in the oven, and icing adds a fraction more. Draw the cutter's height and width as a rectangle on paper, cut it out and put it in the bag or box. If it slides in with room to spare, the biscuit will too. In a box, mixed sizes look deliberate: one 8.9cm character with a few smaller shapes packed around it fills the space better than several biscuits that almost fit. There are more packing ideas in biscuit party bags.
Bake sales and iced biscuits: up to 8.9cm
On a bake-sale table, biscuits are judged from a step or two away, and a larger biscuit reads as a proper portion at one price. The bigger surface also leaves more room for icing between the stamped lines. Several of our face sets sit at the top of the range, including Paw Patrol Faces, Peppa Pig Faces and Sonic Character Faces, all at 8.9cm tall.
Cake toppers and anything bigger
Our range tops out at 8.9cm tall and 10cm wide. If you need a bigger shape, for a cake topper, say, a custom cutter can be made to the size you need. Quotes start from £12 for a single shape, and you see a preview before anything is printed. There is a practical ceiling: a cutter much over 12cm flexes as it cuts, so very large cutters are not advised. The same applies in the other direction. Shrink a design too far and lines thinner than about 1mm will not survive the bake, so they get simplified, and shown to you, first.
A quick size check before you buy
- Find the cut height and width on the listing.
- Hold up a bank card. Standard payment cards are 8.6cm by 5.4cm, so an 8.9cm cutter is a fraction taller than a card's long side, and a 7.6cm cutter a little shorter.
- For anything that has to fit somewhere, draw the rectangle on paper, cut it out, and try it in the box or bag, or on top of the cake.
Thirty seconds with a card or a scrap of paper tells you more than any photo with nothing in it for scale.
Cutter size is not quite baked size
The cutter sets the size of the raw shape. In the oven most doughs spread a little, and a soft, warm or heavily creamed dough spreads a lot, blurring the outline and the stamped detail with it. To keep the biscuit close to the cutter, use the same steps we recommend for crisp embossing: chill the dough, roll it to 4-5mm, press once and firmly, then chill the cut shapes for ten minutes before baking. If your biscuits still come out a size bigger than the cutter, why do my cookies spread covers the usual causes.
Rolling thicker does not make a biscuit wider, but it does make it heavier and slower to bake through, so keep to the same thickness whatever size you are cutting. How thick to roll cookie dough has more on that.
Once you know the size, choosing the character is the easy part. Every listing in the full range gives its cut height and width, so the bank-card check works on all of them.