These flower cookies are the perfect sweet treat for a garden party or birthday party. Decorated flower cookies with royal icing make great gifts, and are super easy to do at home even if you’re a beginner to cookie decorating.
I love flower cookies because they’re so versatile.
You can decorate them with so many colors and use so many different designs that it’s impossible to go wrong.
They are great for royal icing beginners and can be made bright and vibrant for any season.
In this tutorial for flower cookies, I’m going to walk you step by step through what you will need, how to make them, and how to decorate these flower cookies.
GET A FREE COOKIE RECIPE BOOK & SECRET BAKING HACKS!
With 9 guaranteed-delicious cookie recipes and plenty of secret baking hacks, this is your ad-free key to cookie success!
These flower cookies are:
- fun and colorful
- really easy to make
- perfect for Spring or kid’s birthday parties
- great paired with a flower cake
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!
What You’ll Need to Make Decorated Flower Cookies
Making flower cookies means you’ll need to make the flower cookie base, which is done using cut-out sugar cookie dough, as well as the ingredients to make the perfect royal icing.
I have recipes for both the cut-out sugar cookie dough as well as royal icing, which include instructions and advice on making it go well and not being the next baking fail.
The general ingredients for the dough is: eggs, vanilla extract, flour, salt, baking powder, butter, granulated sugar, and powdered sugar.
For the royal icing, you’ll want powdered sugar, water, meringue powder, and vanilla extract.
As for the tools and colors you’ll need, I recommend:
- any food coloring that you want, I prefer gel ones like these
- piping bags – this is the brand I use
- a scribe or toothpick – these are the best ones
- flower cookie cutter – this one is great
How Do I Store Flower Cookies?
Storing decorated royal icing cookies is a big question I get as many people aren’t used to dealing with these types of cookies.
The good news is that they’re super low maintenance.
You only need to store them in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 2 weeks.
If you want to make them ahead of time, you should either make the cookies and freeze them separately before icing, or you can create the decorated royal icing flower cookies and put them in a heat sealed packaging so that they stay fresh.
One tip people have for freshening up cookies that are past their best are putting them in a container with a slice of bread. Weird, but it works!
Can I Substitute Ingredients in Flower Cookies?
You really shouldn’t substitute any ingredients in these recipes, as baking is a science made with specific ingredients and changing even one could throw off the balance.
If you want a recipe that has different ingredients or is fit for your diet, I’d suggest using one that is tailor made for that purpose.
This will save you a lot of time and hassle and cookie fails!
How to Make Flower Cookies
Before you have a cookie to frost, you need to have the cookie first!
Making flower cookies is pretty easy with this no spread sugar cookie recipe.
You really want to make sure you use a recipe that is meant for shapes, as if you use other recipes, the cookie won’t keep its shape and you’ll end up decorating blobs instead of flowers.
The cookie recipe I use holds itself together really well, though you do want to make sure to follow all of the instructions about refrigerating the dough.
I prefer to leave mine in the fridge overnight for the first step, and then I chill for 15 minutes each after rolling it out and then again after cutting the shapes.
Especially when you’ve got the oven on and there is a flurry of activity in the kitchen, it can be easy for the butter in the cookies to start melting first and this leads to spread when baked in the oven.
A chilled cookie will hold its shape much better.
If you want softer cookies, take them out at about 7 or 8 minutes.
This is the ideal time, once the edges are just very slightly golden, as they will harden up after you take them out of the oven.
Let the cookies completely cool while making the royal icing.
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 Royal Icing for Flower Cookies
Royal icing is the type of icing we’ll use to frost these flowers, which is an icing that not everyone is familiar with in home baking.
It is super easy to make and use though, and if you don’t have piping bags, you can use a sandwich or ziploc bag with the tip cut off.
Making the royal icing requires just a bit of patience, as it takes about 8 to 10 minutes of mixing to get the right consistencies, but the ingredients are very simple.
The key with royal icing is to decide what consistency you want to use.
You can make two different ones, one that is stiff like toothpaste and one that is runny like honey, or you can make one in-between consistency that is used for both the outline and filling in the cookie.
If you do one consistency, it keeps the cookie looking smoother, but it can be more difficult for beginners so check out my royal icing tips for more information.
How to Decorate Flower Cookies with Royal Icing
Here comes the fun part – the decoration!
To start, outline the cookie in one color and then immediately flood it in with the same color (which is obvious if you’re using the same consistency, but you could also be using two piping bags with different consistencies so the point is just use the same color).
You can add stripes, polka dots, or a marbling technique to this like you can see in the marbled patriotic stars, and then let it dry for a good 30 minutes to an hour so it sets enough for you to keep decorating on top.
I like to create more classic looking flowers, using a different color to create some petals.
After that dries, you can decorate the center with lots of little dots, or you can leave it smooth or you could add sprinkles to the center for the center of the flower.
The real joy of decorating flower cookies is the true freedom you have to use any techniques you want.
Keep it simple, get crazy with tons of detail, or go for a middle option.
You can display the flower cookies with fake grass (this is obviously real grass, but if you’re packaging them to gift or sell, get some green shred), or bring them to a Spring event to bring some smiles.
Decorated Flower Cookies
These decorated flower cookies are whimsical and colorful royal icing cookies, made with a sugar cookie dough and royal icing.
Ingredients
- 24 cookies using cut-out sugar cookie dough
- 1 batch of royal icing, separated in the colors you want to decorate
Instructions
- Bake the flower cookies using the sugar cut-out cookie recipe
- Make a batch of royal icing using the royal icing recipe
- Separate out the royal icing into as many colors as you want to decorate with and put into piping bags
- Outline the flowe in one color
- Immediately flood the cookie with the same color
- Wait 2 to 3 hours and then decorate the flower by outlining the petals in a different color, and using dots and lines to create a symmetrical pattern
- Let dry for 12 hours
Recommended Products
As an Amazon Associate and member of other affiliate programs, I earn from qualifying purchases.
