These shooting star cookies are out of this world cute, perfect for birthday parties, space themed events, and graduations. Made with a delicious sugar cookie base and royal icing, they are the perfect blend of crunch and smoothness.
Regular star cookies are fun to make, but you can take them up a notch by making shooting star cookies instead.
They work well in a variety of events or celebrations, and they aren’t too difficult to ice with royal icing meaning that even beginner bakers can try their hand at it.
In this shooting star cookie tutorial, I’ll teach you how to make shooting star cookies, how to decorate shooting star cookies, and tips for making royal icing and the sugar cookie dough.
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What Type of Dough Do You Use?
When you’re making these cookies, you want to use a dough that will hold its shape.
That’s why I use a cut-out sugar cookie recipe, which doesn’t spread when it’s cooked in the oven.
If you’ve ever made something like chocolate chip cookies, you’ll know what it means for a cookie to spread – you put the dough in as a ball, and then it comes out a flatter circle of a cookie.
For these cookies, we don’t want any spread!
We want clean and clear edges, as that helps retain their shooting star shape and makes them look beautiful.
Follow the steps in the recipe exactly to ensure you have good results, and be aware that you may need to do a couple of test bakes as your oven might not be at the same temperature it says it is or you may have inadvertedly missed something out.
Better to find out before you go all the way as once it’s baked, there’s no going back!
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!
Ingredients You’ll Need to Make the Dough
To make the dough for these shooting star cookies, you’ll need: flour, butter, granulated sugar, icing sugar, vanilla extract, salt, baking powder, and eggs.
The recipe will have instructions on what temperature the ingredients need to be at (for example, the butter should be at room temperature, not straight out of the fridge), and this helps to combine things in the right way – baking is a science!
Ingredients You’ll Need to Make the Royal Icing
The second part of the cookies is the royal icing.
There are a lot of different types of frosting including buttercream, glaze icing, etc.
Royal icing is one that gives you the ultimate decorating freedom, as you can get very detailed and it comes out wet by dries hard, freezing your design into place.
To make the royal icing recipe I use, you’ll need meringue powder, water, vanilla extract, and a lot of powdered sugar!
Other Tools You’ll Need to Make Shooting Star Cookies
If it’s your first time baking or you need a refresh on what other tools you might need to make shooting star cookies, don’t forget…
- baking tray
- silicone baking mat (makes sure the cookie doesn’t stick and keeps from spreading) – these are the best
- a scribe or toothpick (to move around the icing into place if you make a mistake) – I use this one
- yellow food coloring – gel food coloring is always better than liquid for icing
- piping bags for the royal icing – I love these
- shooting star cookie cutter – this is a great one
Tips for Using Royal Icing on Shooting Star Cookies
Piping with royal icing can be intimidating at first, but it’s easy once you get the hang of it.
These cookies are easy to do for beginners as well as the detail isn’t too intricate.
When piping, always hold your tip about an inch away from the cookie and let the icing drop down instead of actually feeling like you’re placing the icing on the cookie with the tip right next to it.
It feels like the closer you have the tip to the cookie, the more control you’ll have, but it’s the opposite.
I use disposible piping bags and cut the tip off, but make sure that you only cut a little at a time as the opening size you think you need is bigger than what you actually need!
You don’t want the icing spilling out crazily.
How to Mix Color into Royal Icing
You want to mix some color into the royal icing to make your yellow icing for the stars.
To do this, separate some icing into a bowl and start by adding drops of either your liquid or gel food coloring.
I much prefer gel food coloring for a deeper color, but you can use liquid if it’s all you have.
You just want to make sure you’re checking the consistency when you’re doing it and not letting it get too runny.
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 Decorate Shooting Star Cookies
To decorate your shooting star cookies, start by outlining the star in yellow icing and then immediately filling it in, or “flooding” it.
Wait about 30 minutes, then you can flood and outline the tail in white icing.
You want to wait a bit for the icing to harden up a little so that when you put the white icing next to the yellow icing, it doesn’t bleed together.
From there, wait about 8 to 10 hours for the icing to dry so that you can pipe the details on top.
Pipe an outline on the yellow star, and then add some yellow streaks on the white tail for the “shooting star” effect.
And there you have it! Shooting star cookies!
Decorated Shooting Star Cookies
These decorated shooting star cookies are tasty and whimsical, decorated with royal icing on top of sugar cookies.
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 shooting star 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 yellow and white icing and put into piping bags
- Outline the star part in yellow and immediately flood in with yellow
- Wait 20 minutes and outline the trail part in white and flood in with white
- Wait 2 to 3 hours and then add 3 yellow stripes on the trail of the shooting star
- Let dry for 12 hours
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