Sugar lace for Valentine’s Day

I have various people I like to give fancy cookies to on Valentine’s Day, and I have some heart shaped cookie cutters. Lately I’ve been fascinated by sugar lace, which is an edible lace embellishment for cakes and cookies made from a mixture of sugar and gums to keep it flexible. I decided to design a custom lace mold in Illustrator to fit my cookie molds.

First, here’s the cookies with lace and modeling chocolate embellishments:

I think they came out great! The mold for the lace was made by engraving one of those smooth silicone baking mats. The best way I found to make the lace was to get some of that edible inkjet printable paper, cut a piece the approximate size of the mold, get it wet until it softens to a paste, and squeegee it into the mold. Let dry then repeat. The resulting lace is quite sturdy.

The hubby is not all that keen on hearts but loves guitars, so I made a guitar shaped lace for him:

Here’s the molds:

Edit: forgot to say that if you try this, be sure to rub a thin coat of vegetable shortening into the mold before adding the sugar paste, or you’ll never get it out of there without tearing it.

Edit: settings are here.