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These pineapple cookies are perfect for a bit of summer fun or taking to a tropical themed party. Vibrant and bright, they’ll add a bit of excitement to any dessert platter and will impress your friends and family with your royal icing skills.
I love a good tropical cookie, from palm trees to tropical leaves, and these pineapple cookies are no different.
They only need two colors of icing, but they come out super cute and are a cookie you don’t always see.
The pineapple cookie cutter I have is pretty big, so I make less of them as they are a good two servings of cookie per person.
In this tutorial for pineapple cookies, I’m going to walk you step by step through what you will need, how to make them, and how to decorate these pineapple cookies with royal icing.
These pineapple cookies are:
- cute and fun for summer
- easy to decorate with royal icing
- vibrant and colorful with green and yellow hues
- delicious with a vanilla flavoring
What You’ll Need to Make Decorated Pineapple Cookies
Making pineapple cookies requires you to put together the cut-out sugar cookie dough first and foremost.
Nothing goes ahead without the actual cookie base!
The sugar cookie dough is formulated to prevent the cookies from spreading, and I highly recommend it as I get perfectly crisp and clean edges each time.
For the dough, you can find the full list of ingredients and instructions in the cut-out sugar cookie recipe, but know that you should plan to use: powdered sugar, granulated sugar, butter, eggs, vanilla extract, flour, baking powder and salt.
You will also need to round up the ingredients for the royal icing, which is made with meringue powder, water, vanilla extract and powdered sugar.
As for the tools and colors you’ll need, I recommend:
- green food coloring – always use gel food coloring instead of liquid for best results
- yellow food coloring
- piping bags – this is the best brand
- a scribe or toothpick – I use this one
- pineapple cookie cutter – this is a cute one
How Do I Store Pineapple Cookies?
People often make batches of decorated cookies, which means you have to store them somewhere.
Luckily for you, cookies decorated with royal icing don’t need to be refrigerated or frozen if you make them with meringue powder instead of egg whites.
You can just store them at room temperature in an airtight container for 2 to 3 weeks.
If you do want to freeze pineapple cookies, freeze the cookies before decoration.
Freezing royal icing isn’t the best idea as the royal icing might not hold up and your decorations could go ruined.
Can I Substitute Ingredients in Pineapple Cookies
If you’re on a specific diet, you might wonder if you can make substitutions in either the cookie base or the royal icing.
Because baking is such a science, I wouldn’t recommend any sort of substitutions in these recipes.
Instead, if you want to make cookies for a specific diet, find a cookie recipe that caters to that and then follow the instructions on cutting out the pineapple cookie and decorating it.
Keep in mind, though, that you’ll want a no-spread cookie.
How to Make Pineapple Cookies
Making the pineapple cookies themselves without frosting is the first step.
You can’t make a pineapple cookie unless you’ve got a pineapple cookie base!
I use this sugar cookie cut-out recipe, which is designed to make sure that your shapes stay, well, in shape and don’t spread all over the pan.
There are lots of different techniques to make sure that your cookies don’t spread, but the main one followed in this recipe is chilling in the fridge.
This is such an essential step – don’t skip it in order to try and rush through.
You’ll regret it and ruin your batch of cookies.
Make sure that you follow the instructions clearly and combine the ingredients in the correct steps.
When it comes time to roll out the dough, you can use specific dough rolling guides that keep all of your cookies the same height, or you can use something like wooden dowels to do the same thing.
The idea is that you want to create a flat surface, not lots of valleys and peaks due to inaccurate rolling.
Use the pineapple cookie cutter to cut out the shape, flouring the cookie cutter a bit to make sure it doesn’t stick to the dough.
You’ll want to be careful with ones like these when poking the dough out, as it can be easy to get stuck in the smaller crevices like the leaves.
Then, bake for 8 to 10 minutes, depending on how you want the cookies.
I like a softer and less done chewiness, which calls for about 8 minutes.
Let the cookies cool all the way before icing.
How to Make Royal Icing for Pineapple Cookies
While your cookies are cooling, it’s time to make the royal icing!
Royal icing is super simple with just 4 ingredients, but does require you to beat it for quite a few minutes to bring out the consistency you want.
When you first mix it together, it will be incredibly runny, and the further you beat it, the stiffer it will get.
What royal icing consistency you go for is a personal preference that you will develop over time while baking, but for these cookies, I used a 12 second consistency.
That means that if you dragged a knife through the icing, it would take 12 seconds for the line to disappear.
This is the consistency I used to both outline and “flood” and detail these pineapple cookies.
When using royal icing, most people like to pipe it from piping bags.
You won’t be able to just scoop it and spread it.
If you don’t have piping bags, you can use a sandwich bag with a small bit cut off of the corner.
How to Decorate Pineapple Cookies with Royal Icing
Start by outlining the base of the pineapple with yellow icing, and then flooding it in immediately with yellow icing.
Give the cookie a shake if you need to to get the icing to settle smoothly, and then let dry for a good 30 to 60 minutes.
Then, outline and flood in the leaves with green icing.
Let the whole cookie dry out for a couple of hours to make sure you’re decorating on a dried cookie and the icing won’t sink in to what’s already there.
Do a criss cross pattern with yellow icing on the pineapple.
Then, add some lines to the leaves to create a whimsical leaf pattern.
And that’s it! A pineapple cookie almost too cute to eat (but you should, because it’s delicious).
