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World Cup Sugar Cookies

By the time this is posted, one team has already been eliminated from the tournament. 

I blame my poor time management on my husband (of course) who told me that the first game of the semifinals was on Wednesday, not Tuesday. 

(Let’s not focus on the fact that there are plenty of other, more credible, sources of World Cup scheduling information that are easy to come by.)

Regardless, I have been excited to make these cookies since the World Cup started. We are avid soccer football fans in this household, so we have watched just about every weekend game, and some of the weekday games. 

While our team (zie Germans) didn’t get very far this year, we have enjoyed watching some old and new favorites duke it out on the pitch. It’s also been fun for me to sit back and relentlessly mock the players who seem to get hurt so easily (<cough>Neymar). 

But I better not waste any more time or else another team will have been eliminated by the time I get around to showing you how I made these fun World Cup sugar cookies. 

Supplies and Recipes

For these cookies, you will need:

  • Cookies cut into circles, jerseys/shirts, and a speech bubble.
  • Royal icing in black (both piping and flood), white, red, blue (light and dark), and yellow
  • A print out image of a soccer ball approximately the same size as your cookie
  • Plain white tissue paper
  • Food marker
  • Piping bags or zip-top bags
  • Toothpick or scribe tool

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How to Make Them

Oddly enough, the soccer balls were the hardest of the cookies to make. Something about the combination of pentagons and hexagons makes it really hard to draw freehand. 

Fortunately, I have a trick to getting the perfectly patterned soccer ball: tracing!

You can see in the video that I use a piece of tissue paper to trace over the image with a food marker. Then I trace the tracing (follow me?) onto the cookie through the tissue. 

I have better pictures to demonstrate the technique here. 

Other than the soccer balls, the rest of the cookies were pretty straightforward. The jerseys can be as simple or as detailed as you’d like. You can see I added some additional details to the emblems, but that certainly isn’t necessary. 

So, who do you think is going to win the whole thing? I don’t really want to jinx anything, but I think it will be one of these four teams.

 

Flower Crown Easter Bunny Cookies

These cookies are up there with my all-time favorites! They have all of my favorite things: gingham, royal icing flowers, and cute little animals!

I actually created the flower crown Easter bunny cookies for a brand new cookie decorating class I do through Skillpop in Charlotte. People had been asking me to do a class devoted to piping tips, so I delivered! And since Easter is right around the corner, I decided to do something Easter themed! And you know I love a good flower crown!

But since most of you aren’t able to make it to my cookie decorating classes, I wanted to show you how I made them so that you can make them, too!

How to Make Them

As all the students in my piping tip class would tell you, creating the flowers was the easiest part of decorating their flower crown Easter bunny cookies! While they add a lot of detail and seem very intricate, they are actually very simple to create.

The trick is having the right consistency of icing and having the right piping tips!

If you go back to my royal icing post and watch the video you will see me add water to the icing to thin it down. Now, stiff consistency icing is the consistency of the icing before I added any of the water! It forms a peak when you lift a spoon up from the surface and it has very little movement.  That is the consistency you want when you use piping tips.

As for the piping tips themselves, I tend to stick to my tried and true favorites for creating any flower design:

  • The blue drop flower is a Wilton #224 tip
  • The dark pink flowers are made with a #14 open star tip
  • The light pink flowers are made with a #24 closed star tip
  • The leaves are made with a #349 tip
  • The dots are made with a #2 round tip

A lot of my piping tips are from this piping tip set that I bought years ago and still use to this day. But I have supplemented by buying individual piping tips from Michael’s, Amazon, or directly from Wilton. 

The gingham print is also so easy to make but makes the cookies look that much more unique!

All you do is dilute gel food coloring with a bit of clear alcohol or clear extract (like almond), and then paint lines. I find that I paint straighter lines when I move horizontally from left to right. I also recommend letting the paint dry for about a minute before painting the perpendicular lines on top. That ensures that you will actually paint on top of the first line instead of brushing the color off.

Easy peasy!

I hope you try out these cookies for Easter! I know your friends and family will love them! 

If you do make these flower crown Easter bunny cookies or the gingham print cookies, please take a photo and tag me on Instagram. I love seeing what you create!

Products and Recipes

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For these cookies, I used my favorite sugar cookie recipe, but if I make them again I will probably make my strawberry honey sugar cookies from my Summer cookie recipe collection. They are oh so good and they are pink, which just seems appropriate!

And of course, I used my royal icing recipe for both flood and stiff consistency.

How to Pipe Perfect Icing

I have taught dozens of cookie decorating classes. Even before teaching strangers, I was teaching my friends how to decorate cookies. And from all of those experiences, there is one thing I see people struggle with most. And, not to mention, something that I struggled with for a long time. 

How to pipe perfect icing.

What do I mean by that?

A perfectly iced cookie is one with a flat, even layer of icing that perfectly covers every single inch of the surface of the cookie. If you go to a bakery where they sell decorated cookies, follow cookie decorators on Instagram, or pin decorated cookies on Pinterest, then you are probably familiar with what I am talking about. 

Actually, in order to describe what I mean, maybe it’s best to show you what a perfectly iced cookie IS NOT.

The three images above all demonstrate that lumpy, bumpy, uneven icing that I am referring to. The bumps are pretty obvious in the pumpkin cookies, but I promise they are there in the star cookie, also! 

And these three cookies demonstrate that flat, even, and thick layer of icing that now comes naturally thanks to my four tips below. 

How to Pipe Perfect Icing

Tip No. One:

Outline your entire cookie with either piping consistency icing or flood consistency icing. 

THEN WAIT!

Yes, waiting is trick numero uno. You want your outline to harden slightly before filling it with the cookie (you only need to wait about 1 minute for piping consistency icing and 2-3 minutes for flood consistency icing). This creates a barrier for your fill icing so that you don’t have to worry as much about over filling and icing dripping down the sides. Also, by filling with more icing, you are ensuring that you have a perfectly flat surface. 

Tip No. Two: 

Fill the outline you have just created with flood consistency icing so that almost no cookie is showing underneath.

As you will know from my Royal Icing post, flood consistency icing is icing that flows back into itself in about 10 to 15 seconds after running a knife over the surface. To achieve a perfectly flat surface, I tend towards 10 seconds. 

10-second icing will be so fluid that the icing will just start to run together and fill the entire surface area you created with your outline without you even having to touch it. 

Which leads me to tip number three…

Tip No. Three:

Touch the icing sparingly. 

When you watch my videos, you will see me use a scribe tool (that yellow thing in the top right corner) to move the icing around to help fill the outline. I try to do this as little and as quickly as possible. 

If you have done trick number two correctly, you will need to do very little work at this point. The icing should be almost completely covering the cookie with little help from you.

You may wonder why this is such a problem. Well, let me tell you!

The icing starts to dry immediately when it’s exposed to the air. After about a minute, the icing will start to develop a skin. If you continue to move the icing around after this point, it will no longer flow back into an even surface. You will start to get drag marks and bumps. Definitely not the look you are going for. 

Tip No. Four:

Pop the bubbles.

Inevitably, the icing will have a few air bubbles in it. Tapping or shaking the cookie will expose the bubbles on the surface. Use a sharp object to pop them, otherwise, they will look like blemishes on the top of your cookie once the icing has dried. 

Not cute. 

What Not to Do

Most of the tricks are pretty easy to understand. But it’s trick number two that holds people up. No matter how many times I tell people, “fill the cookie so that no cookie is showing underneath”, they tend to under-fill the cookie which results in a lumpy bumpy mess. 

What happened in the cookie above is that 1) I didn’t add enough icing. Because of that, 2) I spent too much time messing with the icing to fill in the outline.

In the last picture, you can see the drag marks that I made in the cookie just trying to move the icing towards the edge.

Okay, I also have one other “what not to do” and that is to not use a knife or spatula to fill the cookie. This is not a technique that I use and I don’t want to use someone else’s picture and call them out, so you will just have to picture it yourself. 

What I have seen some cookie decorators do is outline their entire cookie like in trick number one, above. Then they pour/spread the flood icing with an offset spatula. Sure, it’s fast and easy. And it may even work if you just have one large area like a circle, square, etc. But once you start adding in other smaller areas (the pumpkins are a good example), you are asking for trouble. The spatula spreads the icing too thin that you will see every single imperfection in the cookie as well as any others created by the icing. 

Pros and Cons

There are some pros and cons to this technique. 

I think the pros are pretty obvious:

  • A flat, even surface
  • No lumps, bumps, or bubbles
  • It is faster because you can employ the assembly line method (outline all cookies, then fill all cookies)
  • A thicker layer of icing 

However, the cons may not be quite so obvious:

  • It’s not the best for beginners. This is because you can’t adjust the outline after you fill cookie. This is one of the main reasons I didn’t use this technique earlier, and why I don’t teach it to new students. If you are not used to piping royal icing, it may be very hard to pipe right on the edge of the cookie. By outlining and then filling right away, you can make corrections and adjustments to your outline if you don’t like it. 
  • You can see the outline. If you look at the second set of photos, you can actually see the outline of the cookie. Because the outline is either a different consistency or already dried icing, the fill icing won’t totally blend in. If this is something that bothers you, then this technique may not be for you. 
Summary

Well, that was lots of information for a fairly simple subject. I tend to do that sometimes. So in case you glossed over most of the content and just want the summary version, here are the highlights:

  • Outline the cookie and let it dry for 1-2 minutes.
  • Fill the cookie so that you can see almost no cookie underneath. Don’t underfill!
  • Spend less than 30 seconds spread the icing around.
  • Pop any bubbles on the surface.
  • Don’t use a spatula to spread icing onto the cookie. 

I can almost guarantee that these tips and tricks will help you pipe perfect icing. I have seen such an improvement in my own cookies because of them. Since I was pretty much self-taught, they took me a couple years to master, but now I am sharing them with you so you don’t have to waste your time!

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How to Make Marbled Cookies

Okay, guys, this has been a much requested and long awaited tutorial! I promised to show you how to make marbled cookies back when I made one of my first videos ever, the Laduree Macarons. But today is the day. Consider it my Valentine’s Day gift to you!

Marbling cookies is one of my absolute favorite decorating techniques because it’s just so gosh darn easy. Literally, anyone can do it. I know I say that a lot (because I believe anyone can really do anything) but I really mean it this time. 

There is absolutely no method, no skill, no nothing involved. If you can squeeze, stir, and dip you can make these marbled cookies

How to Make Them

You heard me. Squeeze, stir, and dip? Got it? 

Lesson over. 

Just kidding!! I figured a video of me making marbled cookies would probably help!

One thing I will mention because I didn’t make it clear in the video is that the white, grey, and black icings are all flood consistency icing. You want the icing to be very fluid so that it settles into a flat surface on top of the cookie. 

Tools Needed:

Another reason to love these cookies is that you don’t really need anything special to make them, as you can see in the video. Everything you will need I bet you already have at home.

If you did want to get all fancy and paint some gold on top, this is my favorite gold paint. 

Alright, raise your hand if you think you can make these cookies. Everyone’s hand should be up!

But I highly encourage you to have fun with this technique and play with the colors and the amount of color. As I mentioned in the video, you can do lots of different things with this and just make it your own!

As usual, I made my favorite sugar cookie recipe and royal icing recipe. 

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Holiday Wreath Cookies using Piping Tips

It may not surprise you to find you that I have been doing lots of holiday baking since Black Friday. Honestly, I wish I could be doing more. I had so many fun decorated cookies in mind for the holidays, but I don’t have time to do them all. 

Despite that, I did find time to make some holiday wreath cookies using my favorite piped flower techniques. Really, they are no different than these floral letters I made for Fall or for Mother’s Day. I love making cookies like this using piping tips because they look very elegant and detailed, but you and I know that they are actually pretty easy!

I used the same techniques to add a flower garland to a Christmas tree and to add flowers around a royal icing banner. Piping tips are so versatile and make the cookies look professional.

The piping tips I used for these cookies were:

  • #14 and #24 to make roses, 
  • #74 to make the large leaves, 
  • #379 to make the small leaves, and
  • #16 to make the green star-shaped filler

For some of the cookies, I added some dots just for a bit more color and texture, but I didn’t even bother with a piping tip for those, as a zip-top bag or piping bag does the job.

There are so many fun things to do with piping tips and they are one of my favorite tools to use to decorate cookies. As you can see, they are actually pretty easy to use if you use the right consistency of icing. 

Anytime I use piping tips, I use a stiff consistency icing. That means the icing is very thick. When I mix up my icing, typically I add some water to thin it down. For stiff consistency icing, I barely add water because I want the icing to form a stiff peak when I lift the spoon up from the surface. 

That ensures that all those little details from the piping tip stay put and don’t settle into a blob of icing.

And if you are wondering why my cookies are green, it’s because I made my pistachio sugar cookie recipe from my Ultimate Christmas Cookie guide. But really, you could tint any cookie dough green or leave them plain. 

Tools used:
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Baylor Homecoming Cookies

This weekend, Billy and I are off to Waco for Baylor University’s Homecoming, where Billy and I both went to school. While I have been back to Waco quite a bit over the years, even since moving to Charlotte, this is the first Homecoming we have been back to in years. So it will be a lot of fun to see old friends and sorority sisters who I may not have seen in the last 10 years. 

But it wouldn’t be an event if there I didn’t make cookies, right? Billy jokes that it didn’t happen if I didn’t put it on Instagram. Well, I think it doesn’t happen if I don’t make cookies!

The cookies were inspired by this print that I found on Etsy. I loved it so much I wanted to make it into a cookie! Since I am not artistic enough to hand draw it onto the cookie, I used the tracing method that I demonstrated here. 

I used the same method to make the Sailor Bear cookies to keep with the watercolor theme. But I do think I like these royal icing Sailor Bears I made for the Cotton Bowl better. I made those using the royal icing transfer method, where I just trace over the image with royal icing. 

To see how I made the Sailor Bear cookies, skip to minute 4:00 in the video. To see how I made the skyline cookies, skip to minute 5:27.

I’m giving away all my tricks, here. Now you know that I am actually not all that talented, I am just really good at tracing things with royal icing or a paint brush. 

My favorite cookies of the entire collection are the B-A-Y-L-O-R letter cookies. Of course, I didn’t film these cookies because they were the last ones I made. After spending a few hours making the other cookies I was at a loss of what to do for the letter cookies. Should I just ice them in green and gold icing? Should I paint them? Should I try some fun new design? No, I decided to rely on an old favorite and paint a floral pattern very similar to what I did with these Pineapple cookies. Instead of using several various colors, I just used a couple shades of green and gold. 

Now I just have to pray that they make it to Texas in one piece! 

Recipes used:

Cookie cutters used:

Supplies used:

 
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Fall Pumpkin Cookies

While Fall is one of my favorite seasons (who doesn’t love reprieve from the hot, humid Summer?), I still end September dragging my feet to get into the “Fall spirit”. But come October, and I am in the full Fall mode! In the last week alone, I have made four pumpkin spice recipes. This has got to be a new personal record. 

These cookies are actually one of those recipes. On Tuesday I shared my pumpkin spice sugar cookies which are freaking delicious. They only deserve the best Fall decoration!

I mean, you can’t make pumpkin spice sugar cookies and not make them into adorably decorated pumpkin cookies, right? 

You should know by now that I love throwing royal icing flowers on just about every cookie I make. They are fun way to really dress up a cookie. Plus people are generally pretty impressed with flowers on cookies (little do they know, it’s incredibly easy!). 

I also drew inspiration from my own Mother’s Day cookies and made some floral Fall letters, which I love. Again, they look so intricate and detailed, but really the piping tips do all the work. 

Speaking of which, these are the piping tips I used for the flowers and leaves (all are Wilton brand, most are included in this set):

  • #14 (Rosette)
  • #16 (Rosette)
  • #24 (Rosette)
  • #225 (Drop Flower)
  • #107 (Drop Flower)
  • #349 (Small Leaf)
  • #67 (Big Leaf)

I also used couplers along with my piping bags so that I could switch out my piping tips. For instance, on the pumpkins, I piped red rosettes, but on the letters, I switched to a drop flower tip. Couplers just make it easy to switch out colors and piping tips so you don’t have to have a million different tips. 

Wouldn’t these be so great for Thanksgiving!? I also made a bunch of letters to spell out “Thankful”, which would be a really pretty display on a Thanksgiving dessert table. 

 

Recipes:

Supplies Used:
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Watercolor Flower Pineapple Cookies

One of my favorite cookie decorating techniques lately has been watercolor on cookies. I really love the look of them, but I mostly rlove not having to make so much royal icing!

So with a good friends birthday around the corner, I knew I wanted to make some watercolor cookies for her. In looking for creative inspiration for her cookies, I came across a couple images that I absolutely adored! This sweet pineapple card and this beautiful pineapple print.

From there I was inspired to make these watercolor flower pineapple cookies!

To paint on cookies, you do need a few supplies you may not normally use during cookie decorating…mainly a big bottle of vodka (really any clear extract or alcohol will work, but I prefer vodka). It’s always amusing to my husband to see me painting cookies with a bottle of vodka next to me on the counter. 

Supplies you will need:

I absolutely love how these cookies turned out. I probably say this about every cookie, but these may be my favorite yet. 

I guess it’s like children, you can’t really pick your favorite. But in this case (at least for now) these are definitely my favorite!

And, you don’t have to be an artist to make these. I am by no means an artist (as you may or may not be able to tell). So painting cookies can really be fun for anyone, even the kids!

Pretty Bicycle Cookies

This past Sunday I spent a couple hours making cookies for a friend of ours who is moving to start her next adventure in life. I wanted to send her off with some cookies and these pretty bicycles with baskets of flowers somehow popped into my mind. Do they have anything to do with her move or where she is going? Nope. I just thought they were pretty. 

How can anyone turn down these pretty bicycles in cookie form? It makes me what to immediately go buy a blue bicycle even though the last time I rode a bike I nearly broke my leg. Clearly the person who coined the phrase “it’s just like riding a bike” had never met me. 

I digress…

You may be thinking that piping an entire bicycle with royal icing is extremely hard. While not the easiest thing to pipe, it’s actually just about as easy as tracing!

As I demonstrated in this post, you can easily trace just about any image onto dried royal icing with tissue paper and an edible ink pen. They trace over your image with royal icing. Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

For the flowers in the bike’s baskets, I painted some background leaves and flowers with gel food coloring that I diluted with some clear extract, like almond extract (sometimes I use vodka). Then I piped over them with some other flowers using my favorite piping tips. 

Here are all the recipes and supplies I used to make the cookies:

Piping Tips:

  • #2 (small circle) tip for the wheels and body of the bike
  • #1 (small circle) for the pedal and handles of the bike
  • #14 flower tip for the pink rose
  • #24 flower tip for the peach rose
  • #225 flower tip for the white flower
  • #349 leaf tip for the leaves

Other Supplies:

I hope you enjoy these cookies and maybe you will even make them for yourself or a friend! 

 
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Red White and Blue Water Color Gingham Cookies

If you have stopped by my Instagram feed (@followtheruels) lately and seen any of the cookies that I have posted in the past couple months, you know that there are two things I am obsessed with: water color and royal icing flowers. Adding a little floral touch to cookies is such an easy way to make a plain ol’ cookie look super fancy.

It’s the same for the water color effect. Painting cookies is also a very easy thing you can do to decorate cookies, especially if you don’t like piping. 

So that’s what I did, I combined my love of gingham (I wear a lot of gingham) with my two current favorite cookie decorating techniques to make these water color gingham cookies that are PERFECT for 4th of July!

 

Here are all the recipes and tools that I used:

So festive and patriotic, aren’t they? I love them even with all of their flaws and wonky lines. It makes them look a bit more homemade and rustic. 

You could of course use some guides to make sure your lines are straight. But sometimes the character is in the imperfection, am I right?

 
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Gerber Daisy Cookie Flower Bouquet

I’ve been sitting on these cookies for a while. Not literally of course. I made these well before Mother’s Day and fully intended on sharing them before hand, but then these happened and they became my first priority. And flower cookies are good for any occasion! Especially this cute Gerber daisy flower cookie bouquet. 

These Gerber daisy flowers are actually really easy to make with a petal piping tip. The piping tip just does all the work for you. Make sure you have the wide end of the tip out.

To make the petals, press firmly on the piping bag and pipe the icing out on the edge of the cookie then drag in towards the center. Do that all the way around the cookie. Then pipe another layer of petals the exact same way.

For the center, pipe a circle of dots in stiff consistency icing. You want them to form small peaks. First pipe dots in one color, then pipe more dots around the center in another color.  

My favorite part is putting all the cookies together into a fun flower bouquet! I have to admit, it actually wasn’t easy. It took me about a dozen attempts to get the cookies in the place I wanted them. In the video I’m actually playing it in reverse order, taking cookies away instead of putting them in place. 

I just love this cookie flower bouquet so much! I can see myself making this again for a baby shower for a little girl. Or a bridal shower. Or maybe for next Mother’s Day! Any occasion you may want to give someone a bouquet of flowers, instead give them a bouquet of flower cookies!! Which I think is even better because you can eat the cookies! 

Piping Tips Used:

  • Petals – #104 tip or any large petal tip
  • Center – #2 tip or any small round tip
  • Stems – #10 tip or any medium round tip
  • Filler flowers – #224 tip 

Recipes Used:

 
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How to Trace onto Cookies (Mother’s Day Cookies)

This is part two of my Mother’s Day cookie post. There was just too much to fit all in one post! Floral monogram cookies AND lean how to trace on to a cookie?! I think we would have all been overwhelmed. Plus, I think this technique deserves it’s very own post since it can be used for so many different things: fonts, images, designs, patterns, etc. Anything you don’t feel comfortable drawing freehand with icing, you can do using this technique to trace onto cookies!

But before you can decorate, you need some cookies! For these Mother’s Day cookies I flavored my favorite sugar cookie recipe with a touch of lavender and a whole lot of vanilla bean.

The resulting cookie was this subtly floral vanilla cookie that was so good. I was so afraid of going overboard with the lavender, that I just added a touch to the sugar before I mixed the sugar into the butter. I blended the sugar and lavender together so that each bite would have a very subtle hint of it. 

I didn’t feel the need to hold back on the vanilla, however. I went all out! You can see all the lovely vanilla beans sprinkled throughout the dough. If you look closely, you can sort of make out pieces of lavender, too!

Okay, so now let’s get to the reason you are here: learning to trace onto cookies!

It’s simple and requires only a couple special tools that you may already have around your house or kitchen: tissue paper and a edible food marker. 

First find an image or text that you like and print it out onto normal paper. (I found this one on Google Images and thought it would fit perfectly on my plaque cookies.) 

Top your printed image with a sheet of clean tissue paper. Then trace the image with an edible food marker.

Take the sheet of tissue paper with your image or font traced on it and place it onto of the cookie, making sure that it’s perfectly situated. 

Trace over it again with the edible food marker. Don’t press too hard because you will risk tearing the tissue paper. You should be able to trace two to three times with the same tissue paper. 

Viola! The text or image has now transferred onto the cookie! From here you can just trace over the ink with your icing. 

I say that like it’s no big deal. Tracing the image with the icing is probably the hardest part. I still have yet to master writing cursive letters with icing. 

Since the original image had some flowers on the bottom, I added some flowers to my cookies. 

Now they go perfectly with the other floral monogram cookies I shared on Wednesday. 

Wouldn’t you mom love these cookies? Well, even if you are reading this far from Mother’s Day I hope you have learned how to trace text or an image onto your cookies. I promise, this trick will come in really handy!

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Floral Monogram Mother’s Day Cookies

If you know me, then you know that I can’t let a holiday, no matter how big or small, pass without making some cookies (all my friends are probably nodding their head in agreement right about now). I definitely take advantage of all my friends’ sweet tooths (Sweet teeth? What is the plural of sweet tooth?) by making cookies and forcing them upon them every chance I get. 

These cookies are no exception. After making these cookies for a friends bridal shower, I couldn’t wait to try this floral monogram design again. I knew it would be perfect for Mother’s Day. And even better, I know lots of deserving mom’s out there who definitely a couple cookies to help them celebrate. 

 

For my mom, I made individual letters that spelled out mom and covered them in flowers. But for my friends who are not my mom I made them each individual initial cookies. 

How cute are they? And not just good for Mother’s Day, but they would be great cookies for a bridal shower, baby shower, birthday, wedding….you name it! I am obsessed. 

[Friends, expect to get cookies like these for every birthday from now until the end of time. Thanks.]

The best part is that these cookies are actually quite easy if you have the right piping tips! Just layer on flowers until you have a full letter. 

I like to start with my bigger flowers, like rosettes. I place the rosettes randomly around the cookie leaving space for other flowers. 

Then I go in with my smaller flowers, like drop flowers, and fill in some more space. 

There is obviously some space left, so I go back in and fill them in with some more dots of icing and then fill it in with the leaves. 

Really, there is no technique…just fill up the space!

To go with the monograms, I made some simple little hearts and circle cookies with a single flower and a couple leaves. (Oh, and see those mint “Happy Mother’s Day” plaque cookies? I will show you how I made those on Friday!!)

I am clearly obsessed with these cookies, as you can tell. I think I just like doing the floral designs because they are really impressive without actually being that hard to achieve. 

But that’s just a secret between you and me. If my mom asks, I slaved over these cookies for days just for her. K, thanks! 😉

Recipes Used:

  • 2 batches of my Royal Icing for 40 cookies in flood consistency (the base layer) and stiff consistency (the flowers).
  • 2 1/2 batched of my Sugar Cookie recipe 

Items Used:

  • White Rose – #18 piping tip
  • Light Pink Rose – #16 piping tip
  • Redish Pink Drop Flower/Rose – #225 piping tip
  • Medium Pink Drop flower – #14 piping tip
  • Leaves – #349 piping tip
  • Dots – #2 piping tip
  • Piping Bags
  • Scribe Tool
  • Gel Food Coloring in light pink, watermelon, and forest green

 
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Eyelet Lace Easter Egg Cookies

Quick post today, guys! But it’s a good one, I promise because it has a video! Aren’t those so much better than the ones where I just drone on and one? Probably.

I made these cookies after my cookie decorating class this past weekend. Since this was an intermediate class, one of the techniques that I taught was this eyelet lace effect. I love it uses some pretty basic piping techniques, but it looks much more complicated. 

Just see for yourself!

Unfortunately I didn’t catch the part where I added the flowers. But I have shown you guys that effect in another video, so hopefully you can put the two together!

If you want to make some bunnies to go with your eggs, they are super easy! Just outline and fill the cookies. Once they are crusted over (about 20 minutes) add three small dots scattered around the cookie. Then go in and add some flowers! Easy peasy lemon squeasy! (Ok, I know yall are rolling your eyes at me, but I literally taught these same cookies to a bunch of people who little to know cookie decorating experiences, and their cookies turned out awesome! It’s amazing what a couple piping tips can do!)

Here are some of the things I used to make these cookies:

  • toothpick or scribe tool
  • piping tips #1, #16, #18, #24, #224, #349
  • flood consistency icing in white and the colors of your choice
  • piping consistency icing in white
  • stiff consistency icing in various colors for flowers and leaves

If you try these cookies, I would love to see what you create! 

As always, I used my favorite sugar cookie recipe, with a little lemon zest added, and royal icing recipe. 

Have a hoppy Easter!

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Rustic Floral Valentine’s Day Cookies

It’s been a while since I have decorated a cookies. Actually, it’s only been about an hour. But at the time of making these rustic Valentine’s Day cookies, it had been a while. After the cookie-decorating marathon that is Christmas, I had to take a break. But what better occassion than Valentine’s Day to get back into the cookie decorating game. 

I also used the opportunity to teach myself how to create the wood effect. I have seen a bunch of amazing cookies on Pinterest and I knew it would be a fun thing to try for Valentine’s Day! The best part was that it was a lot easier than I expected. 

But since a cookie that looks like tree bark isn’t very romantic, I added some flowers. And to put it over the top, I carved my husband’s and my initials into it! So cute, right?

Wanna see how I did it?!

I loved the mixture of the wood and the flowers. I actually loved the carved initials cookie so much that I still have it! I put it in bag and it’s sitting on my desk. 

I also loved these cookie so much, I taught this technique in my last cookie decorating class. I think people really liked them, especially the flowers! It’s amazing what a difference piping tips can make.

If you want to make these at home, here are some things you will need:

  • 1 stiff bristled brush
  • toothpick or scribe tool
  • piping tips #18, #20, #224
  • 2 colors of brown piping consistency icing (you don’t want it to thick, or else you won’t be able to spread it very well, but also not to thin that it won’t hold texture)
  • 2-3 colors of pink stiff consistency icing 
  • 1-2 colors of green stiff consistency icing

If you try these cookies, I would love to see what you create! 

As always, I used my favorite sugar cookie recipe (although these would be great with my chocolate sugar cookie, too!) and royal icing recipe. 

PIN NOW, MAKE LATER

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The Best Royal Icing for Decorating Cookies

The Best Royal Icing for Decorating Cookies

I’ve shared my favorite sugar cookie and now have some great new sugar cookie recipes for Summer. I have also shared a few fun ways to decorate the sugar cookies. What I haven’t yet shared is my favorite recipe for royal icing! 

Well friends, today is the day! I am finally sharing my favorite royal icing recipe that I use for all my decorated cookies. After trying a few recipes over the past year, this one is my hands down favorite. It is easy to pipe and creates the perfect crust on the cookies for that perfect finish.


 

The recipe is pretty much like any icing you would have made when decorating cookies – water, powdered sugar, vanilla – but the key ingredient, and what makes it crust up so perfectly is meringue powder. 

The Best Royal Icing Recipe

Meringue powder, as you may have guessed, is processed egg whites (so they are safe to consume without heating up) that help give the icing it’s consistency and also it’s signature “crust”. With the help of meringue powder, this icing will dry perfectly so that you can stack and package these cookies without fear of ruining all your hard work!

To start off, I whisk the meringue powder and water until it forms a foam. I like to whisk this up with a plain old while, not the whisk attachment of my stand mixer. I find that the whisk attachment doesn’t really do much.

The Best Royal Icing Recipe

Then I dump in the powdered sugar and vanilla into the mixer and let the thing go to work. This is when a stand mixer really comes in handy because you need to let this mix for about 2 minutes. If you find that the icing is too thick and isn’t mixing very well, add a bit more water – about 1 tbsp at a time. 


Update: Because I now make such large batches of icing for my cookie decorating classes, I have started using a hand mixer. I actually like using the hand mixer a lot, even though it is a little bit more work. But hey! I’m also getting an arm workout in, too! I just mention this because I know not everyone has a stand mixer, so I want you to know that a hand mixer will work just fine!

The Best Royal Icing Recipe

I just whip it up until the icing becomes light and airy. You will know it’s ready because the color will change from a cream color to almost white. Don’t get me wrong, though, at this point it is VERY thick. This is the kind of icing that you would use to construct a gingerbread house. I’ve learned that you always want to start with thick icing, then thin it down because 1) it keeps longer in the fridge or freezer if you want to make it ahead of time and 2) it’s easier to thin down than to thicken. 

The Best Royal Icing Recipe

Speaking of thinning down, the photo above is the end result of thinning the icing down to flood consistency. I know it’s flood consistency because when I run a spoon or knife over the surface, the icing goes back to how it was in about 10-15 seconds. 

My trick to thinning my icing is to separate out the icing into separate bowls for each color I will need. I mix in the color, then slowly add in water using a spray bottle. That way, if I want to have piping AND flood consistency icing that’s the same color, I can just spoon some out once it gets to piping consistency. 

So how do I know when it gets to piping consistency? I know the icing is good for piping when I can lift up a spoon or knife from the surface and the icing drops down in a relatively steady stream and then forms a soft peak. 

Speaking of coloring my icing, I prefer to use gel food coloring versus the liquid stuff you buy at the grocery store. My favorite brand is AmeriColor, which you can find in singles or packs on Amazon. But I also like Wilton brand, which you can find at Michael’s or your local craft store. 

So now that you know how to whip up a batch of royal icing, here’s an easy Valentine’s Day cookie you can make this weekend. 

Royal Icing

Start with heart-shaped sugar cookies. Then outline the heart in flood consistency royal icing. While the outline is still wet, fill it in with a generous amount of flood consistency icing (NOTE: you can always add more icing if it’s not enough, but you can’t take it away), then spread out the icing with a toothpick or scribe tool (the yellow thing in the bottom right corner). 

You can see the I am using a generic zip-top bag for my piping, which I totally prefer because not only are they cheap and readily available, they do the job just as well. If I am doing something a bit more details or precise, then I would use a piping bag (like these) and some of my piping tips (I highly recommend this kit, but I use this one and this one most often)

If your edges aren’t perfect, that’s okay! Use the toothpick to even out the outline by swirling in small circles in the icing. Once you are happy with it, tap the cookie on the table to get rid of any air bubbles. 

Conversation Heart Cookies-11

Then to finish them off, use a red food coloring marker (found at any craft store) to write your favorite love word or phrase. 

Conversation Heart Cookies-10

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! And have fun decorating your cookies!

 

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