How to Make Lips on a Baby Doll Face out of Fondant

It's helpful to have a doll's face to use as your guide.

Fondant is a special form of icing used by cake decorators and hobbyists to create unique effects. Ordinary icing is versatile, but creating elaborate designs with piping bags and multiple tips requires an advanced set of decorating skills. Fondant is the cake decorating equivalent of modeling clay, and it can be molded or kneaded into anything your imagination can conceive. Many companies sell molds that can be used to create complex figures including babies' faces, but lifelike details such as lips are best done freehand.

Things You'll Need

• Pink or red food coloring
• Fondant
• Doll or doll's head
• Knitting needle or wooden skewer

Instructions

1. Knead pink food coloring into a small portion of fondant. If all you have is red coloring, knead the smallest drop you can manage into a piece of fondant. If it's too dark, pinch off a small piece and knead that into a portion of white fondant. Repeat this process until you've gotten the correct tint.

2. Borrow a doll or doll's head, if you can, that's close to the size of your fondant face.

3. Position the fondant baby face alongside the doll's head, close to your work surface. Comparing the two will make it easier to get the lips right.

4. Roll a very small ball of pink fondant, making a small rope of fondant that's thicker in the middle than at the ends. Make a downward indentation in the middle, using a knitting needle or wooden skewer, and then make an upward indentation on either side. This is the upper lip.

5. Make a second, smaller roll of pink fondant. It should be shorter and thinner, and will make the lower lip.

6. Transfer the upper lip to the fondant face and place it a suitable distance below the nose. Use the end of your knitting needle or wooden skewer to smooth the upper edge of the fondant so it melds seamlessly into the face.

7. Repeat the process with the lower lip, moving the corners to coincide with the corners of the upper lip.

Tips & Warnings

• Only seal the outer edges of each lip by blending them into the face. The inner surfaces of the lips will be more realistic if they're left unattached.

• Brush on pink luster dust, available from cake decorating shops, to accent the baby's lips.

References

• Wilton: Go Figure: Using Molded Fondant to Make People and Animals
• Modern Baking: Sculpt A Sweet, Sleeping Baby