Celebrate the holidays with your own JNC AE86 cookie cutters

Want a JNC-themed activity you can do with your family this holiday season? We at JNC have created an AE86 cookie cutter that you can download, 3D print, and use to make delicious, rear-wheel-drive cookies that will drift their way right into your bellies. 

To be honest, my girlfriend Carrie was the one who came up with the idea to create a car-themed cookie cutter. I chose the AE86 because, well, I love them, but also because their factory colors were dominated by festive reds and whites and two-tone variations on those.

I designed an STL file, which stands for STereoLithography and is a standard file for three-dimensional CAD drawings that can be fed straight into a 3D printer. JNC Touge California‘s rally sweeper Joe Batwinis happened to have one and pumped out two cookie cutters in about 30 minutes.

From there, it’s just a matter of rolling out some off-the-shelf cookie dough mix (adding butter, egg and flour) and pressing out the shapes.

We experimented with different thicknesses of dough and discovered that the long, skinny shape was prone to distortion. Too thin and it’s hard to transfer them onto the baking sheet without stretching it, too thick and the shape gets “puffy” when the dough rises. The ideal thickness is about 0.5 centimeters, or 1/5 of an inch.

After baking, let them cool to room temperature. Then you can apply colored cookie icing. We chose red, white, and black for a Santa theme. The silver was a “color mist” icing spray, which allows a much thinner (and less sugary) coating.

Fortunately for me, Carrie’s mother Cathy, a former wedding cake decorator, was visiting and coached us through the process. She also brought one of those fancy icing squeezer bags with several different tips (though only a number 5 is needed to draw lines). Other tools that might prove useful are sheets of parchment paper, paintbrushes, and a cake serving knife (to lift a sticky, icing-covered cookie off the sheet).

Using the icing, we made a bunch of red, white, silver and black bases. We made the white ones first and were less experienced at that, which is why most of them look so distorted. Let the initial coating of icing dry for about an hour before you draw the details.

Then using the cake icing bags, draw the wheels, windows and stripes. Like with spraypaint, you want to keep moving so the icing doesn’t collect in one spot. When drawing a shape such as a window or wheel, the icing will “blob” initially so start in the middle of the shape before you draw the outline To fill in the shapes, all you need is a dab. Then use the paintbrush to push the icing from the outline towards the center of the shape.

The AE86’s factory paint schemes are perfect for maximizing variation with a minimum of colors. Plus, they look somewhat Christmasy. You have red and white “panda” schemes for the JDM ones, solid red, silver and black for USDM models, and even lower-spec AE85 models with a single black stripe representing the door guards. You can even make Black Limiteds if you so desire.

Want to make cookie Corollas for yourself? Simply download the JNC AE86 Cookie Cutter here. Have fun, and post some photos of your results here, or on Instagram with the hashtag #JNCAE86cookie. Itakdakimasu!

Special thanks to Carrie and Cathy Brzezinski.