#pokenoms

This recipe only called for 5 total ingredients, and even with the melted chocolate and candy glass, you won’t have to solve a mystery to make them!

I started by halving PrettyCakeMachine’s recipe, and I divided that dough in half. I added a bit under a tablespoon of cocoa powder to one half and mixed it in for Pikachu’s hat and magnifying glass. To the other half I added yellow food dye for Pikachu’s face and ears. I chilled my dough in the fridge for about an hour, and once it had firmed up I placed it on a flour-dusted surface and rolled it out to about ½ inch.

I’m kind of obsessed with the Detective Pikachu hats with the ears you can buy (or wear in Pokemon GO!), so I knew I had to make some of those! From my yellow dough, I used my Pikachu cookie cutter to cut out 5 full Pikachu faces and 4 of just the top of the head and ears, which I set aside.

For the magnifying glasses, I used my large circle cutters to punch out big circles from the chocolate cookie dough. I removed the middles using a smaller circle cutter, which I set aside for making the hats. With my extra dough, I used a sharp knife to cut out a tapered handle shape.

To make the hats, I took the smaller circles I had cut out of the magnifying glasses, and cut each one in half. On each half-circle, I cut a curved line to give them more of a crescent shape. I pressed the circle cutter gently into the opposite ends of the hats for the stitching detail. I rolled a small ball of dough for the little nub atop each hat. With my knife, I cut out trapezoid shapes from the dough that I would use as the brim of the hat.

Then it was time to assemble! PrettyCakeMachine explained that a little water could make dough stick together, and she was right! Using a food-safe paintbrush, I placed a bit of water on the end of each magnifying glass handle, and attached them to the big circles. For the hat-wearing Pikachu, if I just attached the hats directly on the heads, they drooped in the space between the ears. So I filled out that space with a small bit of extra dough, adding water to all the seams so the pieces stuck together. I attached the hats and their little nubs with a bit more water, and I baked them in the oven at 390° for 8-10 minutes.

For the brims of the hats, I knew I wanted to get them nice and curved. To achieve that, I took an empty cardboard toilet paper roll, and cut it in half. I wrapped each crescent-shaped half in tin foil. I then draped my trapezoids across the two half-rolls. Since they’re so small, they baked for about 5 minutes.

Schwarz-Weiss Gebäck cookie aren’t traditionally decorated, so I didn’t want to add eyes and such with royal icing like I have for my sugar cookies in the past. Instead, I’d add just a pop of detail with chocolate ears! So once the cookies had cooled completely, I microwaved some chocolate melting wafers and added a little canola oil to thin it out. I carefully dipped each ear on each Pikachu into the melted chocolate, and set them on a sheet of wax paper for the chocolate to harden. To add the brims of the hats, I dipped the long end of each trapezoid into the chocolate, and then attached them to the bottoms of the hats. As the chocolate cooled and hardened, the brims held firm! I then painted on some chocolate to the underside of each brim with my paintbrush to give it a bit more dimension and chocolatey flavour.

For the magnifying glasses, I made candy glass! This was my first time making sugar glass from scratch, and it was pretty easy, but took a lot of patience! Using this recipe, I basically just cooked sugar, water, and corn syrup to just the right temperature in a pot, stirring constantly. When it was finally at temp, my partner held a funnel over the centre of each magnifying glass, and I poured the candy liquid into each one. The reason they came out such a golden colour was because I used gold corn syrup instead of clear, but I didn’t mind - it saved me a trip to the grocery store, and I like the sepia tone result! (I now have a comical amount of leftover candy glass, though!)

And that’s it! I really like how these came out - they’re tender and tasty, and pair really nicely with Detective Pikachu’s drink of choice!