Make Your Own Cookie Cutters!

hey guys I’m Nate welcome back to the
workshop everybody loves cookies and
they can be even more fun when you get
to choose what shape they’re in
sometimes you can’t find just the right
shape of cookie cutter so today we’re
going to see if we can make our very own
cookie cutters using aluminum cans these
cookie cutters will be made using
aluminum cans a little bit of tape and a
little bit of hot glue we also have a
couple of tools that we’re gonna use to
cut and shape the metal sheets we have
our cookie cutter making supplies we’ve
got some cookie dough to test it out on
so let’s get started
to begin I just want the flat sheets of
aluminum that I can get from these cans
so I’m going to start by cutting off the
top cutting down the side and then
cutting off the bottom and use the
utility knife just to get the cut
started and then I’ll switch to scissors
as you can see it’s an extremely ragged
cut but we’ll smooth that out in a
second
with our sheet of aluminum cut out and
now let’s try and get rid of the ragged
edges if you have any sort of straight
edge you can use that will help make
sure your cuts are nice and clean and
you have nice straight lines
it’s much better now one side that’s
completely nice and straight now I’m
just going to do the same thing on the
other side the blade was cutting into
the metal just a little bit of an angle
and it sliced out this little spiral if
you prefer not to use a utility knife
you can also mark off where you want it
to cut and then just use a pair of
scissors
cutting the metal with both utility
knife and the scissors could leave a
sharp edge or some burrs that you could
cut yourself on so just to get rid of
those really quick let’s take some
extremely fine grit sandpaper and go
over the edge of our cam so we don’t cut
ourselves there we go now that we have
our pieces of can cut out the edges
straightened and all of the sharp edges
removed with some sandpaper we’re ready
to start forming these into shapes to
cut cookies for the next step let’s cut
off strips of the aluminum sheeting that
are about one and a half inches wide
there we go now we’ve got our strip I’m
just gonna quickly use the sandpaper
again on the newly cut edge now I’m just
going to mark every half inch on this
inch and a half wide piece so we’re
dividing it into three equal portions
now let’s fold the top third down onto
the second third this will reinforce our
cookie cutter and make it a little bit
stronger as we shape it lose the cap of
my pen to sort of crease that down a
little bit
go we now have a strip of aluminum which
is sturdier on the top and nice and thin
on the bottom let’s make a few more of
those there we go now we’ve got several
strips of our cut and reinforced strips
of aluminum
now with the strips of metal what we
want to do is bend them into the shape
that we want our cookies to be I’ve got
three different shapes here printed out
and I want to try and make cookies that
match these shapes let’s start with this
star shape the goal is we’re going to
try to bend our aluminum sheets to
follow along the line that we have
printed out now I don’t know if this one
sheet of metal is going to be long
enough to get around the whole pattern
but the nice thing is that if you run
out you can take a second sheet and just
nest it nicely into the first one we’ll
then use a little bit of tape and a
small dab of hot glue to secure the ends
together
you can use my pen and just mark the
next spot where I want to bend it that
way I can take it off the paper hold it
in my hands as I do the bending try
bending it over my straight edge and see
if that helps him it makes a nice
straight crease one of the things you
really want to watch out for is that you
need to make sure that your creases are
perfectly perpendicular to the direction
of your metal if you accidentally make
your fold to any sort of an angle you’ll
have a very hard time getting the bottom
of your cookie cutter to stay flat
you can see that this strip of aluminum
has run out and I haven’t quite finished
making my cookie cutter shape so I’m
going to take another piece of the
aluminum attach it to this one and then
just continue along the pattern I’m
going to use a small dot of hot glue
just here in the seam to hold it
together nicely now to reinforce it just
a little bit more to make sure it
doesn’t pull apart I’m almost going to
use a little bit of this strong tape
along the top just like that we have
extended the size of our aluminum strip
by double now I’ve clearly got too much
metal strip right now and I want to be
able to line it up just right so it fits
in here so I’m first going to just give
a rough cut right about there and then
I’ll align it more perfectly after I do
that
there we go we now have a nice
star-shaped strip of metal now let’s
attach the ends here so it holds itself
together well instead of flopping around
if you do end up joining pieces of metal
together check to make sure that the
bottom is still nice and flush if you
have a little bit of a lip like I do
here you can just trim that off with a
pair of scissors now at this point we
have a star-shaped piece of metal that
we should be able to press down into
some cookie dough and give us a
star-shaped cookie let’s try out the
exact same process with a couple other
shapes now with this shape one piece of
metal is pretty much the perfect size to
go all the way around it but I want to
keep that point at the bottom of the
heart shape and since I don’t want to
just tape these two together I’m
actually just going to take a small
piece of another strip of metal and fit
it onto both of them so we can keep that
nice taper
you do have to be careful while pressing
this together because the aluminium
conducts heat pretty well so it can heat
up a lot if you’re using a
high-temperature glue these gloves are
pretty thin but they do stop my fingers
from getting burned as I squeeze that
together alright that looks nice and
attached then just for reinforcement
I’ll put a strip of tape on the outside
and go nice heart shape it’s like
curving this one so I’m just going to
try bending it around like ten looks
like it’s working pretty well
all right that’s working alright we just
need a little patch a couple inches long
to fill this out clearly too long of
course and you just going to do a rough
cut when you measure better
that I think is a pretty good speech
bubble
to test out your cookie cutters make or
buy some sugar cookie dough prepare it
as instructed and then start cutting
them out
we get our shapes up onto a cookie sheet
with have it deforming too much add a
little flour we’re gonna pretend this is
a spatula – not a cheese slicer flour
helps
there we go we’ve got our main cookie
cutters we’ve cut some cookies and we’ve
got those baking and while those are
cooking I actually went ahead to try and
push the creative boundaries of how
detailed of a cookie cutter you can make
with this so I have made a king of
random crown symbol cookie cutter you
might notice there’s a little bit less
detail in this crown than in the
original logo I’m not gonna be able to
get all of those tiny little details
into a cookie anyway however to make
sure I do have the little round points
on the tip of the crown I have this
secondary little tube I’m just gonna cut
out a little circle at the top of each
one so let’s roll out a little bit more
cookie dough and see how well this thing
works
and even just kind of lifting yourself
out make sure all of the bits of the
crown get pushed all the way down to the
dough
oh yeah now let’s take our little hole
punch and cut out on top of the pack
take off the extra dough pop these into
the oven
their shapes have puffed up quite a bit
our first batch of shaped cookies is out
of the oven I don’t think this
particular sugar cookie recipe is the
very best from making custom shapes
because they did kind of deform a little
bit in the oven and I know that’s pretty
natural for that to happen a little bit
these ones seemed to puddle and move
around a little bit more than some
however you can still see the shape
we’ve got hearts stars and these little
speech bubbles and you know what they
taste pretty good too I’m gonna take one
of our speech bubble cookies and I’m
gonna add some decorative frosting which
is one of the best parts of sugar
cookies wow that is yellow frosting all
right spread some frosting on our speech
bubble cookie here now I’m gonna take
just a little bit of this frosting add
some different food coloring and then
pipe it out so we can have some speech
in our speech bubble and mix up a little
bit of frosting here in this cup and a
few drops of glue you can turn this
yellow frosting into a dark green
frosting got a little ziploc bag we’re
gonna use that for piping out our
frosting onto our speech bubble this is
of course not a real authentic piping
bag but I think it’s going to work
because we don’t have all that much to
right cut off a tiny bit of the corner
well as I feared we definitely did lose
some definition in those crowns now it
looks kind of more like a jellyfish
inside a triangle but that’s alright the
cookie cutter works great this
particular cookie dough doesn’t work
amazingly there you have it we have
taken some soda cans cut them up into
little strips of aluminum and folded
them and molded them into just the right
shape so we can use them as custom
cookie cutters these things actually
work really well they cut through the
dough very nicely just because you have
a thin metal edge so it’s really easy to
get right through pick up a lot of
detail and then they cook and you’ve got
your shaped cookies this particular
cookie dough does tend to deform a
little bit so you’ve got like a vague
reminiscent shape of your cookies but
for the most part this worked really
well I’m pretty happy with it you can
cut out your shapes decorate them with
frosting right draw put sprinkles on
them whatever you want to do however you
like your cookies that’s level Point is
fully customizing this project is a lot
of fun obviously doesn’t take many
supplies it’s basically just some empty
soda cans and then you can make your own
custom cookies this is a great project
that you should do at home or at a
friend’s house or you know wherever you
make cookies grandma’s house thanks guys
for joining us for this project and we
look forward to the next one talk to you
then king of random cookie with sort of
a deformed crown shape in there sure
there’s everyone out there on YouTube
who has their own cooking and baking
channel is just laughing at me for doing
this completely the wrong way hey guys
thank you for your comments so many of
you have really interesting suggestions
for projects and experiments and we love
testing those out for you I also wanted
to say thank you for the great feedback
you’re leaving for me and my team
because we are all in this together so
thank you for being on our team