An unexpected benefit that comes with making sugar cookies for my community is that customers will sometimes bring me ideas and designs that I would never think to make on my own. This post is all about one of those designs! If you’ve spent any time on Pinterest or other social media sites looking at hot dessert trends, you’re probably well aware that this last year has absolutely been the year of the unicorn. Some of those desserts can look awfully intimidating to create in your own home kitchen, so I’m excited to bring you a way to get your unicorn on without a huge commitment of time and resources.
These cookies also make awesome favors for parties! They fit perfectly into 4″x 6″ food grade bags. Because most of the detail is simple, you can get them made and solid and bagged in one day. They also hold up well in small hands- which aren’t always the most gentle when it comes to handling edible art! There are just a few things you’ll need to get rolling on these cookies today:
- A great sugar cookie recipe! Click here for my tried-and-true favorite, or use one of your own recipes!
- Royal icing in several colors. You’ll want white to flood the star, and then pink, purple, and green for the detail. Click here for my icing recipe and flooding tutorial!
- A food-grade marker (Amazon link here) for drawing eyes on your stars.
- Edible gold dust (Amazon link here) and lemon extract to mix together, along with a small paintbrush for the unicorn horn.
- A counter top fan. As always, I recommend you use a fan whenever you are working with royal icing. It cuts your drying time in half and can help prevent colors from bleeding together as you decorate. All the times listed below will assume you’re using a fan. If you’re not, double the drying time to be on the safe side.
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.
Are you ready? Let’s get magical!
Start by baking your cookies and allowing them to cool completely on a wire rack. Flood the entire cookie with white royal icing and allow them to dry several hours on the counter. Once your cookies are solid, pipe three wavy lines across the top of one of the star points. I used yellow to pipe because I had some handy, but white is absolutely fine to use as well.
Allow 20-30 minutes for those lines to harden up, and then begin mixing your gold paint as described above. Paint the entire star point, from the tip to just a little below where the point joins the body of the star.
Next, use a star tip (I used #14 here) with piping consistency pink royal icing to pipe two or three simple star shapes onto your cookies. Remove the star tip and replace it with a #5 piping tip and squeeze another two to three round dots onto your cookie.
Repeat this process with purple royal icing. I also like to make at least one large swirl at this time, to make a focal point and to fill up space where the horn meets the rest of the cookie. Wait a few minutes for your dot surfaces to harden.
Now it’s time to turn those plain pink and purple dots into roses! This is actually an awesome hack you can use anytime that you want to make simple flowers on a cookie. Put a #1 piping tip (the smallest tip) on your pink and purple icing bags, and draw small swirls on top of your dots, beginning in the middle of the dot and moving toward the outside. So easy! At this point, put your cookies back under the fan for about 2 hours to prevent any color bleeding.
Next up are your leaves. I used a #67 tip, but whatever small leaf tip you have will be fine. Using green icing mixed to piping consistency, intersperse leaves randomly around the flower wreath. This is a good opportunity to ‘hide’ any mistakes you might have made, or to balance out flowers that might be a little heavier on one side than the other. Finally, grab one of your food grade markers and draw on some cute eyes.
Give your cookies another couple hours under the fan (or overnight if you don’t have a fan) for everything to finish hardening completely, and then you can bag these babies and rake in the compliments!
How did everything turn out for you? Make sure to let me know in the comments, or shoot me any questions you have!
