Monarch Butterfly Cookies

You can make pretty monarch butterfly cookies any size you want. Just bake some cookies, round, square, whatever shape you want (I used a plaque cookie cutter), and then make a butterfly template that fits the cookie out of a piece of paper.

To decorate them, you need to have all of your icings ready to go at once. I used delphinium blue for the background and medium orange and black for the butterfly. I thinned these to flood consistency and put them each into piping bags fitted with a  #1 tip. Whenever I'm outlining and filling small areas, I use a #1 tip so that the icing is easier to control.

I also mixed some small amounts of white, yellow and dark orange flood icings and covered them with plastic wrap so they wouldn't dry out. I applied them to the cookie by using a scribe tool, a toothpick or skewer would also work.

You also need an edible ink marker to make these, here's how:

Bake a batch of cookies and cut a butterfly shape that fits.

Lay the butterfly template on the cookie.

Use an edible ink marker to trace the template.

Outline the body of the butterfly.

Outline the cookie with icing, I used delphinium blue.

Then start to outline the butterfly and fill in the background sections. Use a scribe tool, toothpick or skewer to help evenly distribute the icing.

Keep working around the whole butterfly.

It will look like this.

Use your edible ink marker to draw a border around the butterfly and draw the wing sections.

Outline and fill the border of the butterfly with black icing.

Use a scribe tool, toothpick, or skewer to add dots and short lines of the dark orange, yellow and white icing around the border. Just touch the icing to pick up a little and then drop it onto the border. This technique allows you to add very small details.

It will look like this.

Now, outline the wing sections with black icing.

Fill the sections with medium orange icing. Be careful not too add too much or it will spill over your outline and again use your scribe tools to move and manipulate the icing.

All done. Let the cookie dry completely before serving or packaging.