Happy September! I thought I’d share a few bursts of butterfly color while we head into the fall season (where I live). Marbling butterflies is one of the easiest and most effective ways to decorate cookies – a minimum of effort (depending on how many you make and of course how many designs), with remarkable results. If you’re new to decorating, really, you can do this, and if you’re an experienced decorator, I’d love to see some of your designs if you’d like to share below.
How to Decorate Butterfly Cookies
If you can’t see video click here.
If you’d like to make these, check out the video above and the tools etc. you’ll need below.
Cookie Recipe
These are sugar cookies; you can find the recipe here. There are other cut-out cookie recipes here.
The cookie cutters can be found here.
Royal Icing
You can find my favorite royal icing recipe here. The consistency of icing is key for easy decorating. Click here to see a YouTube video on finding the right icing thickness.
Decorating Items
What you’ll need (these are affiliate links):
- Piping Tips – PME #1 and PME #1.5
- Piping Bags
- Couplers
- Gel paste colors
- Scribe Tool or Toothpicks
Decorating Steps
This video on outlining and flooding is a good place to start if you’re new to decorating cookies with royal icing. These cookie decorating basics YouTube videos may also be helpful to get you started.
Besides the video tutorial on YouTube which I’ve shared here, I’ve also shared a few how-to videos on Instagram, which you can see here.
Play around with different icing colors and designs; it’s fun to see what you can come up with!
The techniques are all the same, just add more or less colors and drag the icing in different directions.
Once you have the basics it’s easy to play around with the designs.
If you have any questions or comments please feel free to drop me a line below in the comment section or on social media. You can find me on Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter and YouTube.
Happy baking and decorating!
xo,
Marian
Wow! they are so cute lovely 🙂
Missed your posts and happy to see you back Marian
Nothing less than spectacular, Marian.
And, even more beautiful is this email arriving in my inbox.
xo
*sigh* 🙂
They look all so very beautiful, Marian.
Your gift is amazing. Thank you for sharing these cute and stunning looking butterfly cookies (look SO real too!).
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.”
James 1:17
xoxo,
niner 🙂
Thanks for the comments! xo
Would love to learn to make these.
I love your posts and videos. How do you keep the colors, particularly reds and blacks, from bleeding after a day or so?
Thanks!
Lynda
Hi Lynda,
Here is a post for you on bleeding:
https://sweetopia.net/2009/10/how-to-prevent-your-icing-from-bleeding-7-tips/
And one on spotting which may help:
https://sweetopia.net/2011/07/how-to-avoid-spots-on-icing/
Have fun decorating!
Marian
What blues did you use? They are beautiful!
Oh wow, I can’t remember for sure, it’s been quite some time, but the blues I do have are Americolor navy blue, Wilton baby blue, Wilton royal blue and Americolor teal.
Is the black icing you’re using (not the outline but the other) flood consistency. I ask because I used the same consistency for the black but had trouble with dragging my black through the colors. It didn’t show up very well as a line. Does it need to be thicker?
These look amazing but I’m just wondering can you use your own sugar cookie recipe??
Absolutely, Lisa!
Beautiful job. Very impressed, but I must comment that the ads are extremely annoying.
Thank you, Elaine. I don’t like them either, but, they allow me to pay for the site and server etc., so that I can provide free content.
We featured your blue butterfly cookies on The Friday Blog! You can check out your feature here:
https://fridayapparel.com/blogs/the-friday-blog/may-the-4th-celebration-hype-may-the-food-be-with-you
XOXO