Penny Powers Cookies

A few months ago I bought Mallory Mae’s Craftsy class called “Cookies that Pop!” and ever since I’ve wanted to decorate a batch with a detailed few focal cookies in her suggested style. I don’t get a lot of free time for involved projects like that with a toddler in the house, especially with the problem of royal icing separating overnight so you can’t just set it aside and pick it up the next day.

But I also happened to know that my friend Charles Dowd who writes girl-positive comics my older daughter loves was about to release a Kickstarter for his latest project, so I asked him if I could replicate some of his art on a cookie set and he was happy to allow me to do so.

And so over a ridiculous amount of time (such that they actually got fully stale during the decorating process) I made these:

They’re not perfect but I think they’re pretty good for a first go with this style of decorating, especially given how long it took me to get them done, and hopefully this serves as a good inspiration to others that you don’t have to be competition-perfect to have fun and play with cookie design. The yellow gave me particular problems because of separation; if I’d been using proper fresh royal icing, these would have gone much better. I can’t wait for Robin to start preschool!

Anyway, I started out by printing off a sheet Dowd gave me of the two main characters – Penny Powers and Hypercat – plus her heart symbol. I eventually decided these were too big and printed a smaller version to make templates for cutting the actual cookies, but used the larger version to make colour notations. The Craftsy course included doing two-tone skin and other shading, so I really wanted to bring out that part of the Penny Powers art as well. That does mean making a lot of bags of icing, though!

My plan sheet, including where I rubbed test bits of colour on the white paper to compare to the promo pics of the comic to determine which colours matched most closely.

Dowd will be releasing the sheet as a freebie on the Kickstarter so you can make cookies of your own as well, so be sure to stay tuned to the Kickstarter page. Remember that the best way to track updates is to be a backer!

For these or any other custom cookies, simply print at the desired size, cover both sides of the page with clear packing tape to make it grease-proof, and cut out the shapes with enough space at the edges so icing won’t spill off. Roll out your dough (I used my regular dark chocolate rolled cookie recipe), lay your template over top, and cut around it with a sharp knife.

I also screencapped one of his promo pics and printed out the Penny Powers logo to cut out a general shape for that cookie, plus some basic hearts, rounds in various sizes, a rectangle, and some random-pointy burst shapes all to serve as secondary cookies in the set.

After baking your cookies and letting them cool fully, cut out another version of the templates into pieces so you can use a black edible ink marker on a light cookie or a scribe/needle tool on a dark cookie to trace the main elements of the design as a guide. This is covered more thoroughly in Mallory Mae’s Craftsy class, which I highly recommend.

Then mix up the icing colours you need and fill the areas almost like a paint-by-number project.

Penny has eleven different colours on her: black, two shades of brown for her hair, two shades of flesh tone, two shades of purple for the mask, red for the shoulder parts of her cape, two shades of pink for her outfit, and white for her eyes and mouth.

I used the plastic wrap trick to make lots of small amounts in the various colours in a way that will let me wash and reuse many plastic icing bags. I do them as shown in the video although I tie the back end closed. I also used couplers so I could swap out my number 1 and 2 tips as needed, because while I do have multiple of each, I don’t have enough for all of these colours.

Hypercat has eight colours, although originally I planned more and just gave up on a few for lack of time. He’s got a main gray plus a darker gray for shading (I originally planned a light gray for highlights), red for his cape (I originally planned a dark red for shading as well), black for outline and his eyes, two shades of purple for his mask, and yellow for his medallion.

The final tally of colours I actually used and the Americolor gels I used to make them is:

1. White (just the plain icing, although Mae recommends adding white food gel if you’re going to colour large areas white)
2. Black (Super Black)
3. Light brown (Warm Brown with a tiny amount of Chocolate Brown)
4. Dark brown (above Light brown with some more Chocolate Brown added)
5. Light Purple (Fuchsia)
6. Dark Purple (above Light purple with a tiny amount of Super Black added)
7. Red (Super Red)
8. Medium Gray (tiny amount of Super Black)
9. Dark Gray (slightly more Super Black than the Medium Gray)
10. Yellow (Electric Yellow)
11. Light Pink (Deep Pink plus a bit of Dusty Rose)
12. Dark Pink (above Light Pink with a bit more Dusty Rose added)
13. Light Flesh (tiny amount of Ivory)
14. Dark Flesh (slightly more Ivory than the Light Flesh)

The logo should have had a yellow border around the purple letters and the hearts, but the yellow was flooding poorly and I didn’t feel that I had enough control to do that level of detail.

Once I’d used what was needed for the main character cookies and the logos, I played around with what was left on other shapes I’d cut for the batch. There was no particular pattern for any of the rest; I just piped some designs and words pertaining to the Penny Powers comic. Dowd told me that her catch phrase is “Holy cats!”, I’d observed some KA-POWs in the promotional material, and I figured at least one should have Hypercat’s name. I did several with Penny’s initials in various styles just to play and learn with the icing.

Rounds with various designs and wording, including Penny’s catch phrase.

I probably should have planned the letters better so the top one didn’t have to droop to the side, but I’ve also watched enough vintage Batman to know that the letters on these things don’t need to line up perfectly.

Penny’s heart logo, done with an outer edge of leftover dark pink, red on the inside, and lined in black. You technically don’t even need a template for these since you could use any heart cutter and just trim the sides straight.

These were my less-than-stellar experiments. In the upper left I was trying to evoke the white eyes motif on the purple background, but it looked a little weird. Then I thought I’d try doing the eye band, but it looked weird by itself so I added a mouth. But the hair isn’t right so it looks more like a little buzz-cut version of Penny. Maybe it’s some little kid mimicking her outfit? The Hypercat cookie is okay but my piped lettering isn’t perfect.

So there you have it: even though I’m fairly experienced doing cakes, I’m actually pretty new to this type of cookie and my piping skills aren’t top notch, yet I could make up a fun batch of Penny Powers cookies. This means you can too! Remember to just play around and practice. If you’re daunted by all of the colours, don’t do the shading and stick to the basic colour palette Dowd will be putting out instead. Just cut up the template, transfer it to your cookies, and fill in with icing. And if it goes all wrong, eat that evidence and nobody has to know!

Happy cookie making, and here’s to hoping the Kickstarter is a huge success!

Disclaimer: I am a contributor to the Penny Powers Kickstarter and have received no compensation from Dowd for this post, although in the past he’s included my kids in his comics. I have never received any payment from him and in fact I regularly pay him for his books. I have also paid him to do the cover art for my latest novel “Finding Gaia“.