thomas the train cookies

My best friend Sue has a friend who asked me to make Thomas the Train cookies as favors for her son's birthday party, and while it sounded like it would be a complicated cookie to do, I was up for the challenge!  There were two specific things that she wanted for this cookie - she wanted it to be a really vibrant blue, and she wanted it to be a front view of Thomas the Train.

I had initially bought a cookie cutter of a side view of Thomas the Train, but when it turned out that she wanted the front view, I asked my hubby to make me another custom cookie cutter.  (Isn't he the best?!)

After cutting out and baking the cookies using my favorite homemade sugar cookie recipe, I used black royal icing to pipe my borders, and then filled in the various colors in each section (kind of like paint by numbers!).  This was by far the most complicated cookie I've made so far - usually my cookies only have 2 to 3 colors, but this one had 6 different colors!

I let the icing dry overnight, before adding the details such as the lights and the face.  It took me a while to get the expression in his face just right, so I had several mess-ups to eat (and hand out to my neighbors and my coworkers the next day).

Once everything dried completely, I wrapped each cookie in a cellophane bag and tied them with raffia and custom favor tags.  In the end I thought I had made the blue icing a little too blue, but I guess that's better than not being blue enough?  I also thought there were too many black lines everywhere, which made it look too much like a coloring book.  So next time I think I'd pipe the borders in the same color as the filled icing.

Hope the Thomas the Train party was a hit!