These decorated teacup cookies are delicious sugar cookies to finish off your afternoon tea or to help you celebrate a tea-themed party.
Whether it’s an afternoon tea with your 5 year old or you are trying to think of gifts for a friend who loves teacups, these teacup sugar cookies are a fun way to decorate cookies.
They’re soft and chewy, while being sturdy enough to hold the delicious royal icing, and you can get creative with the teacup designs and personalize with colors and patterns.
Enjoy this teacup cookie tutorial, teaching you how to make teacup cookies, how to decorate teacup cookies, and tips for using royal icing.
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Ingredients You’ll Need
To make teacup cookies, you’ll need the ingredients for both the cut-out sugar cookie bases and the royal icing recipe.
The exact amounts can be found in those recipes, but you’ll want to make sure you have: powdered sugar, sugar, all-purpose flour, baking powder, eggs, butter, salt, meringue powder, water, and vanilla extract.
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!
Tools You’ll Want
To make teacup cookies, gather up:
- a teacup cookie cutter – this is a great one
- gel food coloring – I like this brand (always go gel over liquid for icing coloring)
- baking tray
- silicone mat – these are the ones I use
- scribe or toothpick – I have this one
- piping bag for royal icing – I highly recommend these
How to Make the Sugar Cookie Dough
The cut-out sugar cookie dough is the most important part of making sure you end up with teacup cookies and not big blob cookies.
You can use the recipe on my website, or you can find any cut-out cookie recipe you want in whatever flavor you want – they are offered in chocolate, gluten free, gingerbread, etc.
The key to making sure your cookies don’t spread and go misshapen, aside from using a cut-out cookie recipe, is to make sure that you follow the chilling instructions and ensure that you leave the dough in the fridge long enough.
You also should make sure your oven is fully preheated before putting the cookies in.
I bake the cookies until the edges just slightly start to go golden, and then let them firm up and cool on the baking sheet out of the oven.
This will result in soft cookies that are sturdy enough to hold their shape.
Royal Icing Tips and Techniques
Royal icing is the best icing for being able to create intricate designs, and it dries smooth for a really beautiful finish, unlike something like buttercream frosting which won’t dry hard (and isn’t supposed to).
To make royal icing, use the royal icing recipe and then check out the tips for decorating with royal icing I’ve put together after going through my own beginner’s experience myself.
The key to using royal icing is to be willing to practice and make mistakes, as well as mess around with consistency.
For these cookies, I decorated the actual cup of the teacup with 12 second icing (which means it took 12 seconds for the line to disappear after I drew one in the icing with a knife), and the handles with stiff royal icing that held its shape more – created by adding even more powdered sugar to the 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 Decorate Teacup Cookies
First, outline the entire cup in one color.
Immediately flood in that outline with the same color.
Using the wet-on-wet technique, come in with other icing colors to create patterns and shapes.
I liked to do a zig zag line, or you can do a curly line, or straight lines.
To create flowers using the wet-on-wet techniue, pipe one large dot of icing, and then pipe 5 smaller dots of icing in another color around it.
Allow this to dry for a good 2 or so hours, then come in with your other color of stiff icing to draw on the handle in whatever pattern you want.
Let dry for 8 to 12 hours and enjoy!
Adorable Teacup Cookies
These adorable teacup cookies are perfect for an afternoon tea party!
Ingredients
- 12 sugar cookies in teacup shape
- 4 cups of royal icing
Instructions
- Make the teacup cookies using the cut-out sugar cookie recipe
- Make a batch of royal icing using the royal icing recipe
- Separate the royal icing into the colors you want for your teacups
- Outline the entire cup in one color.
- Immediately flood in that outline with the same color.
- Using the wet-on-wet technique, come in with other icing colors to create patterns and shapes.
- Allow this to dry for a good 2 or so hours, then come in with your other color of stiff icing to draw on the handle in whatever pattern you want.
- Let dry for 8 to 12 hours and enjoy!
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