Is it against the laws of nature and society to make sweets for your dentist? The first time I made these cookies, they were for a local dentist and I was conflicted about bringing that much sugar into the one place that you don’t want an excess of sugar. But maybe we should all be bringing our dentists more sweets and less veggies, because her entire office was thrilled with the offering and demanded I bring more next time. And now I make these cookies for local tooth professionals on a pretty regular basis. Dentists need their sweet tooth satisfied now and then too!
Let me tell you, I sure did struggle with a name for this particular cookie. Fancy teeth? Mr. and Mrs. Teeth? And then I realized that these cookies are awfully sweet little characters, and inspiration struck. Of course I had to call each cookie a Sweet Tooth. With those cheery pink cheeks and fun little accessories, it doesn’t get much sweeter. And another sweet thing about these cookies? If you have a desire to try and make these but you’re worried about your decorating skill level, these guys are easy! They look like they take a ton of effort, but with only three colors and very simple techniques, almost anyone can knock this particular design out of the park.
Materials Needed for Sweet Tooth Sugar Cookies
- Sugar cookies, baked and cooled (find my favorite recipe at the bottom of this post, or a step-by-step tutorial here)
- Tooth cookie cutter (available here on Amazon)
- Royal Icing (find my favorite recipe at the bottom of this post, or click here for a newbie tutorial)
- White, mixed to a medium flooding consistency, and a small amount at piping consistency
- Black, at piping consistency
- Gray, pink and blue in small amounts at piping consistency
- Edible silver dusting powder for pearl accents (available here on Amazon)
- Airbrush tool for creating pink cheeks (available here on Amazon)
- Optional: Etching tool to help make sharp points (available here on Amazon)
- Optional: Counter top fan to speed drying times
You’ll notice I’ve made use of my trusty airbrush for the cheek blush. I can’t recommend an airbrush enough to anyone serious about decorating sugar cookies, it’ll open up a whole world of design choices for you. You can click here to learn all about airbrushing and how it’s much less intimidating than you might have thought! If you haven’t gotten an airbrush yet, you can substitute some of your pink royal icing.
Let’s satisfy our collective sweet tooth and get started!
Begin by baking your cookies and allowing them to cool fully. Grab your white royal icing and flood the entire cookie. Place them into front of a small fan and allow them about an hour to harden up (if you don’t use a fan, double all the waiting times in this tutorial).
When you’re ready to proceed, pick up your black icing at piping consistency (use a #1 tip here) and pipe two eyes level with the widest part of the cookie. Rather than make circles, hold your tip still and squeeze until you have a nice, rounded shape the size you want it to be- for these, a little bit bigger than a pencil eraser. On half of the cookies, pipe eyelashes right after making the eye so that the icing smooths together. Once you’ve made all your eyes, pipe a simple smile underneath.
Now it’s time to airbrush. This is a quick step but it adds so much to your cookie. Once again, check out my how-to post here if you need an airbrush refresher. Load your airbrush pen with ‘deep pink’ dye, which comes in the airbrush kit I recommend. Using a piece of plain white printer paper, practice using gentle pressure to create small symmetrical circles. When you’re confident in your muscle memory, airbrush those same circles onto your cookies, slightly farther apart than the eyes. Give your cookie eyes and cheeks about half an hour to fully harden and dry.
Let’s start on the accents! Pick up the gray piping icing (with #1 tip) and gather together all your ‘girl’ tooth cookies. Pipe a line of necklace dots across the ‘neck’ of the cookie, using the most indented points of the cookie as a guide for where to start and stop. Now it’s time for the ‘boy’ cookies. Going back to your black icing, pipe some cute little eyeglasses around the eyes. It’s okay if they’re not perfect, it adds to the charm of these cookies! As a rule, try and bring the bottom of the lenses down to just touch the tops of the pink cheeks and you should stay mostly symmetrical.
While you wait for your necklaces and glasses to dry, use your pink icing to pipe a large dot at the top right of the girl cookies. Then use the blue icing to pipe a large dot on the boy cookies, right between the two roots of the tooth. Switching back to the girls, pipe two small triangles at an angle on either side of the pink dot to create a bow. You can use your etching needle to pull the icing out into sharper points to accentuate your bow shape. Do the same thing for the boys, but make those bow ties straight! Nobody likes a sloppy bow tie, right? Now give the cookies about half an hour to harden.
Now it’s time to do something about those eyes. A soulless stare from a tooth kinda an unnerving thing, don’t you think? Adding a bit of white detail softens them up and makes them adorable. Grab your white piping icing and pipe two dots onto each eye, with the bottom dot a little bigger than the higher one. Now they’re friendly teeth- which is a phrase I didn’t know I’d be typing today!
Final step! Let’s turn that gray necklace into pearls. If you haven’t pained a cookie before, no worries! It’s easy. Grab a small bowl or ramekin and gently tap some of the silver dust into it- you can eyeball the amount, but I usually use about 1/2 tsp of dust to begin. Add to that about 2 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, dip a small, clean paintbrush into the silver paint and then lightly run it across 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.
And there you have it- Sweet Tooth sugar cookies! Aren’t they cute? If you have any thoughts or questions, make sure to pop them into the comments box below and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Until next time, happy fall 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).
