It’s the holiday season, right? Everyone’s got snowmen, trees, and stockings on the brain- all the typical imagery that’s everywhere this time of year. But what if you’re really ride-or-die for something different? Or even worse, what if you know a child that is obsessed with something that isn’t typically a holiday thing and demands that you somehow marry the two together? If that’s you, I feel your pain, my friend. My kids are still utterly obsessed with unicorns- you know what I’m talking about, you saw them on cakes, cupcakes, fruit snacks, bedspreads, and everything else with an available surface. Both the baking trend and my kids’ love for it show no signs of letting up anytime soon, so when they asked for Christmas unicorn cookies I knew I could rise to the challenge. And so these cookies were born, and they’ve have been a hit absolutely everywhere I bring them.
Let’s start off by mentioning that these cookies are fast to make. You can bake and decorate them all in a few hours because you’re actually working with very few colors, although you’ll end up with a lovely assortment of silver, gold, red berries, and greenery. You also might recognize them as a cousin of my very popular post for regular Unicorn Star Sugar Cookies, which are great the other 11 months of the year. While those cookies take a bit longer to make because you’re creating a lot of floral shapes, you can breeze through this design by sticking with silver and gold globe ‘ornaments’ and a smattering of holly berries in your leaves. These colors together just evoke all the Christmas feels for me, but if you would like different colors you can certainly change it up as you see fit.
Materials Needed for Christmas Unicorn Star Cookies
- Sugar cookies, cut into a star shape, baked and cooled. My favorite sugar cookie recipe is linked at the bottom of this post!
- Royal icing in several colors. Find my recipe at the bottom of this post with the cookie recipe, or a beginner tutorial here if you’re just starting out. Medium consistency is between piping and flooding, and is suitable for both if you have moderate practice. Medium consistency icing will disappear when dripped off the beater back into a bowl in about 4 seconds.
- White, at medium consistency
- Green, at piping consistency
- Red, at medium consistency
- #2 tips, #1 tips, and a small leaf tip (#65 is what I use, and you can find it here on Amazon)
- Edible gold and silver dust (you can find the gold here and the silver here on Amazon) and a small, new craft paintbrush
- A black, fine tipped food grade marker, available here on Amazon.
- A counter top fan to speed drying times (optional but very recommended if you have one in the house already!)
A word about painting cookies: If you’ve never painted a sugar cookie before, have no fear- it’s easy! Grab a small bowl or ramekin and gently tap some of the gold dust into it- you can eyeball the amount, but I usually use about 1 tsp of dust to begin. Add to that 2-3 tsp of clear lemon extract and mix well. It will appear thin at first but this mixture evaporates quicker than you might expect. If it’s thinner than you prefer, add a touch more dust. If it gets too thick as you spend time painting, add more extract. To actually paint your cookies, use a very small brush! Dip it into the gold paint and then lightly run it along the area you want to paint. It’s much better to do a second coat later than to over saturate the area in one go. This paint dries quickly, so a few minutes after you’re done you can decorate on top of it if you need to. You can repeat this process with the silver dust during the appropriate step below.
Well, enough words! We’re just two weeks from the 25th and Santa needs his unicorn cookies… for reasons. Don’t worry about it. Just make the unicorns and it’ll all be okay.
Begin by baking your cookies. I use a 3″ diameter star for my cookies, and I really wouldn’t go much over that or you’re going to be spending a lot of time making leaves later! Once the cookies are completely cool, flood the entire shape with white icing and stick them all under the fan for about an hour so that the icing can harden up. When you’re ready to move on, choose which point of the star you’d like to make the unicorn horn. Swap the tip on your white icing for a #1 and pipe 4 wavy lines across that star point. (I used yellow icing here to make it pop for the photo so that you can see it well, but white is totally fine.) Back under the fan for about half an hour for those details to harden up.
Now it’s time to mix up your gold paint! Using the steps mentioned above in “A word about painting cookies”, prepare your gold paint. Paint the entire star point, from the tip to just a little below where the point joins the body of the star. Remember, it’s always better to do several coats than to glob it on there and have it look like a mess! If you have extra paint mixed up, cover the bowl with plastic wrap for later.
Next, pick up your white icing again. Stick with the #1 tip and pipe small dots all over the cookie under the horn, from the end of the left star point all the way to the end of the right. You can place a couple right next to each other, but try and keep the rest spaced out in a random pattern. Put the cookies back under the fan for another half an hour.
Mix up a little more gold paint (or use your leftovers from above if you have some) and paint some of the dots gold- I like to do four or five gold and leave the rest, since you already have a fair amount of gold on your cookie with the horn. Rinse the bowl and brush, and mix some silver paint. Paint the rest of the dots silver! Don’t worry if the paint spreads down the sides and onto the cookie surface a little bit, you’ll be able to hide that in the next step.
By the time you finish painting your last cookie, the first should be ready for the next step. Pick up the green piping icing with the leaf tip. Pipe small leaves in all directions, covering most of the space between the silver and gold ornaments. You can also leave small gaps here and there for berries later. Now all the cookies need to go back under the fan for an hour so that the leaves have time to harden.
Now it’s berry time! Using your red icing and a #1 tip, pipe small ‘berry’ dots at random spots all over the wreath. You can place some directly on the cookie, and some at the bottoms of the leaves to create dimension.
Once you’ve gotten your berries out of the way, all that’s left is to use your food grade marker to draw some eyes onto your unicorn. You can make whatever type of eyes you like, but I prefer the classic “unicorn with eyelashes” look!
And there you have it! Christmas unicorns, the thing you never knew you needed but now your holidays won’t be complete without. How did they turn out for you? Make sure to let me know in the comments, and you can ask me any questions that you might have there as well. I’m always here to help! Until next time, keep on enjoying this holiday season and happy baking!
Foolproof Sugar Cookies
Ingredients
- 3 cups all purpose flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 cup butter
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/2 tsp almond extract
- 1 egg
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350.
- In bowl, mix together 3 cups of the flour and baking power. Set aside.
- In separate bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Add in the extracts and the egg and beat until combined.
- Slowly add the flour mixture to the butter mixture. Dough will be crumbly.
- Press dough together with hands, and roll out on a well-floured surface. Cut shapes and place on a baking sheet covered in parchment paper.
- Refrigerate baking sheet for at least 10 minutes.
- Bake for 9-11 minutes, remove when cookie edges are just barely golden. Allow several minutes to cool on sheet before moving cookies to a rack.
Royal Icing
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup water
- 3 Tbsp meringue powder
- 4 cups confectioner's (powdered) sugar sifted
- 1/2 tsp Karo syrup (optional)
- 1/8 tsp clear flavored extract (optional)
Instructions
- Combine water and meringue powder in a bowl and beat with mixer until frothy.
- Sift powdered sugar into the same bowl and mix to combine
- Add syrup and extract if desired
- Beat the icing for 4-5 minutes until it is glossy and holds a peak if the beater is turned upside down
Medium Consistency
- Continue to add water ½ Tbsp at a time until at desired consistency (icing should disappear into itself in about 5 seconds after being dripped back into the mixing bowl).
Flooding Consistency
- Continue to add water ½ Tbsp at a time until at desired consistency (icing should disappear into itself in about 3 seconds after being dripped back into the mixing bowl).
