Adorable Baby Shower Cookies (you can make yourself)

These baby shower cookies are super easy to decorate and you can make them entirely yourself with tools you have at home to really peronsonalize them for the mom to be.

When it comes to baby shower cookies, there are lots of options, but I contend that decorated sugar cookies are the most versatile when it comes to creating the designs and colors you want.

You can color the icing to go with the gender of the baby or the with the mom’s favorite colors, and there are so many options when it comes to the cut-out shapes.

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These baby shower cookies are:

easy to personalize for your baby shower theme
delicious and soft when you bite into them, not crumbly
able to be stored at room temperature and left out, so no worries about refrigerating
a sweet gesture for the mom-to-be

These baby shower cookies start with the perfect sugar cookie cut-out base.

You want a cookie that is going to bind together and be able to be molded into shapes, not something like chocolate chip cookie dough batter that is going to spread and create round edges.

There is at least an hour of chilling involved in making the sugar cookies, so you’ll want to give yourself enough time and not start to make these 10 minutes before you need to leave.

The second component of this baby shower cookies recipe to complete the look is royal icing, dyed to whichever colors you want.

I’ll talk more about this shortly.

Must-Have Baking Tools (seriously)

Silicone baking mats – I use this brand and my cookies slide right off without burning!
a cookie scoop – get this one. It makes the perfect rounded cookies every time!
silicone spatula – try this set. It’s the best way to get the most out of your dough and batters
rolling pin guides – I use this one. Genius way to roll your dough out evenly!

Can You Freeze Baby Shower Cookies?

You can freeze baby shower cookies, but I would recommend freezing them either as the dough or once baked before icing.

When you freeze them after icing, due to the squished nature of many freezers, you run the risk of ruining your perfect icing.

Can You Refrigrate Baby Shower Cookies?

Yes, you can refrigerate baby shower cookies for about a week, but they’ll last at room temperature for quite a long time, up to 4 weeks in an airtight container, so you don’t need to worry about making room in the fridge for them.

Keep in mind that you can only keep them at room temperature if you make them using meringue powder like I talk about in my royal icing recipe.

If you make them using egg whites, they need to go in the fridge.

Can I Make Substitutions in the Cookies?

There aren’t any crazy ingredients in these cookies, mostly just sugars, butter, and flour, but if you need to substitute any ingredients, you should really make sure you have time to test it out.

Cut-out cookies are a science to get everything correct and not spreading too much or losing their shape or falling apart, so experiment at your own risk.

Tips for Making Baby Shower Cookies

When it comes to making baby shower cookies, there are lots of tips and tricks to be aware of.

Some key ones include making sure you’re not overicing them.

Make sure that the icing you start with is thick like toothpaste for the detail icing or runny like honey for the “flood” icing.

If you have too-runny icing, it will just drip off the cookies.

You also should make sure that the cookies are completely cooled before icing, and ensure that they are flat and not super bumpy.

Another top tip is that less is more if you’re unsure or haven’t decorated cookies before.

A cookie that’s all one color with a beautiful outline of the same color is much better than one with 8 colors in a weird mishapen mess.

When it comes to which baby shower cookie cutters to purchase or decorate, you should also look at the edges.

For example, the baby onesie is much easier to do than the rocking horse due to how much larger the cookie is and how the edges are pretty clean cut and easy to follow.

Ingredients for Baby Shower Cookies

To make baby shower cookies plus the icing, you’ll need plain flour, baking powder, salt, unsalted butter, granulated sugar, powdered sugar, and vanilla extract.

Tools for Making Baby Shower Cookies

In addition to the tools you need to make the actual cookies like a baking sheet and a mixer, you should also make sure you have piping bags or ziploc bags you can use as piping bags, a wire cooling rack, and food coloring to choose the colors you want for your cookies.

Must-Have Decorating Tools

Piping bags – I use and love these ones
Gel food coloring – much better than liquid food coloring
Meringue powder – I use this kind for my royal icing
Scribe – for awesome detail and clean up

How to Make Baby Shower Cookies

Firstly, start with the baby shower cookie cutters you want.

I had a baby bib cookie, baby onesie cookie, baby foot cookie, rocking horse cookie and baby bottle cookie.

Use the basic sugar cookie cut-out recipe and make your batch of sugar cookies.

While those are cooling, use the royal icing recipe to create the royal icing.

Once you have a big batch of thicker “line” icing, separate it into bowls for how many colors you want – I like to just stick with 2 or 3 as my color scheme, keeping in mind that you’ll probably want more pastel colors for baby shower cookies.

Then, once you have one bowl of each color icing, separate it again.

One of those bowls will go straight into the piping bag, as that’s your “line” or detail icing, and the other will get a tiny bit of water added (seriously, just a tiny bit) and it will become your thinner “flood” icing to fill in the cooking.

Then, go to town with decorating!

To decorate a baby shower cookie with royal icing, you’re first going to use your line icing to outline the cookie.

Then, use your flood icing to fill it in in the same color after about 5 minutes left to set.

From there, you can add more details on top using line icing if you want to add hearts, polka dots, etc.

One classic technique is to then use the “line” icing again in the same color to draw an outline on top of your cookie to give it a bit more definition.