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.

Stripe And Chevron Cookies

These stripe and chevron cookies look impressive but are so simple to make. The only real trick is to be sure that you have all your icing colors mixed and ready to go before you start decorating since these are made using the "wet on wet technique," meaning you add the base coat of icing and then immediately add other colors of icing on top of it.

This technique is great because you can get so many different looks depending on what colors you choose.

I obviously decided to go bright. Here's how I made them:

Mix your royal icing colors and thin them so that they are flood consistency. Put the icings into pastry bags fitted with #2 tips.

Flood a cookie and immediately add some stripes.

Add some more stripes.

And even more stripes. This cookie looks good as is, or you can create a chevron effect.

To create a chevron, draw through the stripes using a skewer or scribe tool, being sure to wipe the tool clean after each swipe.

Then draw through the stripes going in the opposite direction. That's all there is to it! Let the cookies dry completely before packaging and serving.

Writing On Cookies

Cookies for a handwriting workshop.

Writing on cookies takes patience and most importantly the right consistency of royal icing.

If your icing is too stiff it will leave peaks and break and if it's too thin it will spread and your letters will gradually become indistinguishable.

When thinning icing for writing, I aim for the consistency of yogurt - a consistency that will hold it's shape but is still soft enough flow evenly as you pipe and not leave peaks.

The best way to test for proper writing consistency is to first practice piping onto a plate to test the icing. With my recent batch of cookies for a handwriting workshop, I did this and it saved me from ruining a few cookies.

Wait for the icing base coat on your cookies to dry before adding writing.

I started by using a #1 tip which didn't work with my icing. The tip wasn't large enough for the icing to flow evenly.  It zigzagged out of the tip and was impossible to control

I changed to a #2 tip and as you can see from the photo of my practice plate (below), that did the trick.

The #1 tip just made uncontrollable squiggles. That's a pretty bad looking "C". Switching to a #2 tip made all the difference as you can see from my "A's" and "B". Always test your icing on a plate before going for it on the cookies.

A final tip is don't decorate cookies when you are feeling rushed. Decorated sugar cookies keep for weeks so they don't need to be made the day before. Tackle the project when you can take your time and you will have much better results.

Turkey Sugar Cookie Video

Here's a quick video to show you how to create the turkey sugar cookies in my November 11, 2012 post.