DOTTED, STRIPED & SPIRALED SKINS

I started doing all sorts of really creative skins toward the end of recipe testing for the book and it quickly became something I woke up BEFORE my alarm to do. I was just so excited by it. These small edible works of art are a true joy to create. Kids are especially good at creating art skins. They are often more attuned to the dumpling way than adults ;). Please tag your fun dumpling creations with #dumplingsequallove so I can see!

For a hand-rolled-dots skin, choose 2 to 3 different colored/flavored dumpling doughs (pages 52-57 in the book) and choose one as your primary sheet. Top it with tiny pea-sized hand rolled dough balls of a different dough color or two. Lightly press the dough balls down onto the sheet with your palms and then hand or machine roll it out to your desired dumpling skin thickness.

Cookie cutter or fondant cutter dots! You can get a similar effect to those hand-rolled dots by first rolling out two different doughs to about 1/8-inch thick. Then use a 1-inch or smaller circular cookie or fondant cutter to cut out holes in one. (If you want to end up with polka dots, use an oblong cutter and situate it so that the holes will be stretched when rolling the seocn time into polka dots.) Take the sheet with the cut holes and place it directly over the other sheet, and trim the edges. Hand or machine roll it to the desired thickness. You can put the remaining cut out pieces onto another sheet of dough after that and roll it, or you can make crackers or boil them into noodles.

Other cookie, fondant or clay cutter shapes. Sets of all of these things are usually quite inexpensive and you’ll get hearts, stars, diamonds and other fun shapes. They are so much fun to play around with! You can use both the cut-out sheets as well as the cut-out dough pieces themselves in so many different ways.

Stripes are easy to craft on dumpling skins too. Hand or machine roll or pasta cut your dumpling dough into noodles and design the primary sheet with them. Again, lightly press the stripes down with your palms before rolling the dough out.

Spirals are fun too! I want you to have soooooo much fun being wild and free and creative with all of your art skins!