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These soccer ball cookies are perfect for celebrating the end of the season or gifting to the soccer lover in your life. They’re delicious, adorable, and super chewy!
Got a soccer player you’re searching for cookie ideas for?
Make these soccer ball cookies with the help of an edible food marker and some royal icing.
Even if you’re a beginner at cookie decorating, this step-by-step tutorial to making soccer ball cookies will make sure that yours come out just how you want.
Sports cookies are a great idea for bringing to the end of season game or end of season party, so get busy for your favorite local soccer team and bring them some sugar cookie soccer ball deliciousness!
In this soccer ball cookie tutorial, I’ll teach how you to make sugar cookie soccer balls, how to decorate soccer ball cookies and how to make the dough for soccer ball cookies.
What Kind of Dough Do You Use for Soccer Ball Cookies?
You can make these soccer ball cookies using sugar cookie dough, but make sure you use this cut-out sugar cookie dough recipe as it won’t spread in the oven.
You want the circles to retain their shape and their crisp edges when you take them out of the oven, otherwise you won’t have a good result and they won’t look as nice.
The recipe itself is formulated to prevent spread with the ratio of wet to dry ingredients and the powdered sugar used, but you can also do your part by following what the recipe says in terms of chilling times and making sure that you have your oven hot enough to get that cookie baked and set before the butter can takeover melting.
If you find that your cookies do spread, but you need to save them – take the original cookie cutter and cut it on your newly baked cookie while it’s still warm – the edges won’t look as clean, but it will help.
What Kind of Icing are Used in these Soccer Ball Cookies?
The way to get the precise icing work you see on these cookies is to use royal icing.
This icing sets hard and is piped out, rather than being spread on.
Unlike buttercream or glaze, it’s great for precision work.
If you’ve never worked with royal icing before, that’s okay!
Do some tests before you decorate the cookies, and read up on royal icing consistencies, and you’ll be just fine.
For these cookies, you want a royal icing consistency of about 12 seconds – that is, it would take 12 seconds for the line to disappear if you dragged a knife through the icing.
You don’t want it completely stiff and unmoving because you need the sections to become smooth, but you don’t want it so loose that the icing spreads everywhere.
I only decorated with royal icing a couple of times before really getting the hang of it, and even though it can be intimidating to beginner bakers, it’s a really great way to create stunning cookies like these soccer ball cookies and impress your friends.
How to Decorate Soccer Ball Cookies
To decorate soccer ball cookies, put black and white royal icing in piping bags and use an edible food marker to mark out the sections.
I did this by first drawing two main shapes in the center and then creating lines off of it, following the lines of a real soccer ball.
It doesn’t have to be perfect – just do the best you can and realize that many of the sections won’t be “complete” but will end at the end of the cookie to help you figure out how to draw it in.
Then, you should outline all of the sections that will be in black using the royal icing and immediately fill them in with black royal icing.
You do not want to fill in any sections that directly touch at this point.
Give those an hour or so to dry, and then continue filling in sections in white – again, not doing any that would mean two wet sides touching yet.
Let that dry again and finish up by filling in any other sections with white later in an hour or so.
To finish, you can use black icing to go over the seams or you can use a black food marker to draw over the lines of the soccer ball seams.
