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These flower cookies are the perfect sweet treat for a garden party or birthday party. Decorated flower cookies with royal icing make great gifts, and are super easy to do at home even if you’re a beginner to cookie decorating.
I love flower cookies because they’re so versatile.
You can decorate them with so many colors and use so many different designs that it’s impossible to go wrong.
They are great for royal icing beginners and can be made bright and vibrant for any season.
In this tutorial for flower cookies, I’m going to walk you step by step through what you will need, how to make them, and how to decorate these flower cookies.
These flower cookies are:
- fun and colorful
- really easy to make
- perfect for Spring or kid’s birthday parties
- great paired with a flower cake
What You’ll Need to Make Decorated Flower Cookies
Making flower cookies means you’ll need to make the flower cookie base, which is done using cut-out sugar cookie dough, as well as the ingredients to make the perfect royal icing.
I have recipes for both the cut-out sugar cookie dough as well as royal icing, which include instructions and advice on making it go well and not being the next baking fail.
The general ingredients for the dough is: eggs, vanilla extract, flour, salt, baking powder, butter, granulated sugar, and powdered sugar.
For the royal icing, you’ll want powdered sugar, water, meringue powder, and vanilla extract.
As for the tools and colors you’ll need, I recommend:
- any food coloring that you want, I prefer gel ones like these
- piping bags – this is the brand I use
- a scribe or toothpick – these are the best ones
- flower cookie cutter – this one is great
How Do I Store Flower Cookies?
Storing decorated royal icing cookies is a big question I get as many people aren’t used to dealing with these types of cookies.
The good news is that they’re super low maintenance.
You only need to store them in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 2 weeks.
If you want to make them ahead of time, you should either make the cookies and freeze them separately before icing, or you can create the decorated royal icing flower cookies and put them in a heat sealed packaging so that they stay fresh.
One tip people have for freshening up cookies that are past their best are putting them in a container with a slice of bread. Weird, but it works!
Can I Substitute Ingredients in Flower Cookies?
You really shouldn’t substitute any ingredients in these recipes, as baking is a science made with specific ingredients and changing even one could throw off the balance.
If you want a recipe that has different ingredients or is fit for your diet, I’d suggest using one that is tailor made for that purpose.
This will save you a lot of time and hassle and cookie fails!
How to Make Flower Cookies
Before you have a cookie to frost, you need to have the cookie first!
Making flower cookies is pretty easy with this no spread sugar cookie recipe.
You really want to make sure you use a recipe that is meant for shapes, as if you use other recipes, the cookie won’t keep its shape and you’ll end up decorating blobs instead of flowers.
The cookie recipe I use holds itself together really well, though you do want to make sure to follow all of the instructions about refrigerating the dough.
I prefer to leave mine in the fridge overnight for the first step, and then I chill for 15 minutes each after rolling it out and then again after cutting the shapes.
Especially when you’ve got the oven on and there is a flurry of activity in the kitchen, it can be easy for the butter in the cookies to start melting first and this leads to spread when baked in the oven.
A chilled cookie will hold its shape much better.
If you want softer cookies, take them out at about 7 or 8 minutes.
This is the ideal time, once the edges are just very slightly golden, as they will harden up after you take them out of the oven.
Let the cookies completely cool while making the royal icing.
How to Make Royal Icing for Flower Cookies
Royal icing is the type of icing we’ll use to frost these flowers, which is an icing that not everyone is familiar with in home baking.
It is super easy to make and use though, and if you don’t have piping bags, you can use a sandwich or ziploc bag with the tip cut off.
Making the royal icing requires just a bit of patience, as it takes about 8 to 10 minutes of mixing to get the right consistencies, but the ingredients are very simple.
The key with royal icing is to decide what consistency you want to use.
You can make two different ones, one that is stiff like toothpaste and one that is runny like honey, or you can make one in-between consistency that is used for both the outline and filling in the cookie.
If you do one consistency, it keeps the cookie looking smoother, but it can be more difficult for beginners so check out my royal icing tips for more information.
How to Decorate Flower Cookies with Royal Icing
Here comes the fun part – the decoration!
To start, outline the cookie in one color and then immediately flood it in with the same color (which is obvious if you’re using the same consistency, but you could also be using two piping bags with different consistencies so the point is just use the same color).
You can add stripes, polka dots, or a marbling technique to this like you can see in the marbled patriotic stars, and then let it dry for a good 30 minutes to an hour so it sets enough for you to keep decorating on top.
I like to create more classic looking flowers, using a different color to create some petals.
After that dries, you can decorate the center with lots of little dots, or you can leave it smooth or you could add sprinkles to the center for the center of the flower.
The real joy of decorating flower cookies is the true freedom you have to use any techniques you want.
Keep it simple, get crazy with tons of detail, or go for a middle option.
You can display the flower cookies with fake grass (this is obviously real grass, but if you’re packaging them to gift or sell, get some green shred), or bring them to a Spring event to bring some smiles.
