I loved making these unicorn cookies for my niece’s 5th birthday party. They’re simple and straightforward to make with a few key tips, especially regarding the consistency of the royal icing, and the Farrah Fawcett unicorn manes were my favorite part – so fun!
To see the video I’ve made showing the icing consistencies for the unicorns, and how to create the multi-colored manes, click below.
How to Decorate Unicorn Cookies (Video)
Click here if you can’t see the video.
I’ll also share all the recipes and tools I used to make these, as well as some cookie decorating basics, below. Please feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions, happy to help!
Decorating Cookies
Find the cookie cutters I used here by clicking on each individual cutter below (Any links to Amazon in this post are affiliate links):
Cookie Cutters:
- Wilton Unicorn Head Cookie Cutter
- Meri Meri Unicorn Head Cookie Cutter
- Fiocco Cookies Unicorn Cookie Cutter
- Emma’s Sweets Unicorn Head Cookie Cutter
- Number 5 Cookie Cutter
- Wilton Embossed Happy Birthday Cookie Cutter and Press
- Flower Cookie Cutter
Sugar Cookie and Confetti Sugar Cookie Recipes
The sugar cookie recipe can be found here.
Some of the cookies are made using my Confetti Sugar Cookie recipe, which can be found here.
Royal Icing Recipe
The royal icing recipe can be found here.
Decorating Items
What you’ll need:
- Piping Tips – PME #1.5, PME 2.5 or PME #3, and Wilton star tip #18
- Piping Bags
- Couplers
- Gel paste colors
- Scribe Tool or Toothpicks
- Gold Luster Dust and raspberry vodka to dilute it (you can use a clear extract instead)
- Gold Edible Stars Confetti (optional)
- Black Edible Ink Marker
- Plastic Wrap
- Paintbrush for luster dust
- Painters palette to mix luster dust and vodka
Royal Icing Consistency
The consistency of icing is key for easy decorating. Click here to see a YouTube video on finding the right icing thickness for basic flooding and decorating. You might want to also check out this post.
Cookie Decorating Basics
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.
Here are other videos I mentioned in the video tutorial:
How to Find Royal Icing Consistency
Cookie Decorating Basics (YouTube Playlist)
Let me also mention that the beautiful thing about cookies, is that they freeze really well. If you’d like to start baking and decorating early for any event, click on the links to find posts on freezing cookies, thawing cookies and the shelf life of cookies.
Lastly, you may find this FAQ’s page helpful.
Thanks for visiting me here, hope you found the tutorial helpful. Please feel free to leave a response if you have any questions or comments, and happy, happy decorating to you!
xo,
Marian
p.s. Please excuse all the photos, as usual… Had fun playing around!
Hi Marian,
Beautiful decorated Unicorn cookies! Love your way how you teach your talents!
Love fellow your blog!
ML
Thank you Maria! I appreciate the comment! xo
Simply amazing! I adore your techniques and appreciate you sharing. Love the idea of putting a stamp message on the cookie bottoms! So creative and clever! Thanks for all you do, Marian! 🙂
Hi Emily,
Thank you so much for sharing, I do appreciate it! xo
Hi Marian, beautiful unicorn cookies! I’m trying to make them for my daughter’s 5th birthday next week. Once they are made, how should I store them until next week? If I wrap them individually, do they last for a few days? Thank you
Hi Lara,
Yes, individual bags is perfect. A week is fine too! Here is a post for you on the shelf life of cookies. Xo
https://sweetopia.net/2012/02/how-long-do-decorated-cookies-stay-fresh-what-is-the-shelf-life-of-decorated-cookies/
How much extract or vodka do you mix with the gold luster? Does it matter what brand of vodka? Thank you!
Hi Amber,
I don’t have it down to an exact science, but if I could try and give you a visual… If you look at the white painter’s palette I’m using in the video, I filled one of the “bowls” (I’m not sure what they’re called), half full with luster dust, and then added the vodka until the “bowl” was about 3/4 full. I usually just pour a little vodka into the lid and then into the “bowl”, so I don’t overfill. You can use an eye dropper as well. Mix thoroughly. Little pockets of dust need to be popped out so I mix for a minute at least.
If you test paint a cookie and it looks watery, add more dust of course. It will look pasty and somewhat granular if there’s not enough liquid. It is better to err on the side of too thick though, because to thin will really dissolve the royal icing on your cookie. A *little bit* of dissolving is hard to avoid though, to be frank.
Other than that, all long as your vodka or extract is clear, you can use that. I happen to have raspberry vodka, Smirnoff. Smells nice when you use it.
Hope that helps!
oh my goodness! these cookies are seriously the prettiest! love everything about them. You are really talented 🙂 The photo looks so stunning as well! thank you for sharing with us! I hope you will have a great day!
Thank you Olivia, for the compliments! Have a great day as well!
Hi Marian,
Your cookies are always so beautiful! What type of luster dust do you use? When I click on the link it takes me to Amazon but wasn’t sure which one to choose.
Hello! I’m so excited to replicate these adorable cookies. Thank you for all the tips!
Quick questions for you – are the pastel manes also made of a thicker royal icing, or a buttercream? I’m assuming the horn is also a thicker royal icing to keep its three layer shape?
Thanks again!!
G
Hi Gwyneth,
Yes the mane is thick royal icing, you can see the consistencies of the icing in the video. The horn is a somewhat thick icing, I could have made it thicker so it would keep its shape better. It kept the shape a bit. 🙂
Hi Amazing how do you do the perfect letter S?
Thank you for your reply
Hi Marie,
I used a projector to project the image, and then traced the S. I used a slightly thicker icing to outline, and then a runnier one to fill in. Once it was completely dry, I painted it with the same gold as the unicorns. Hope that helps!
Hi Marian.
Simplicity AMAZING! I’m on the internet most of my time looking for cookie decorations even though I don’t have who eat my cookies. Yours are really amazing look Neat! Adorable! Out of words.
Congratulations best wishes.
Nelly
Cutest cookies ever! I tried making similar unicorns last night, but made a rookie mistake (I just started decorating cookies three months ago). I made my tri-color frosting a few days in advance, which seemed like a great idea at the time. But by the time I was ready to frost the mane, the frosting had separated. I didn’t want to massage the tri-color frosting too well, because then the three colors would have blended to become one unknown color. So my stiff tri-color frosting ended up being a bit wet and melting a little. Not ideal. I don’t know… now I’m thinking that maybe my stiff frosting was too wet to begin with? This was actually the first time I needed stiff frosting. But next time, I’ll make my tri-color frosting immediately before frosting my cookies to avoid the potential of this happening again.
Do you remember what Gold Luster Dust you used? It’s the perfect shade! The gold I picked up is almost bronze, so not my favorite with this color palette. Your Amazon affiliate link doesn’t link to one product so it’s hard to tell, and I would LOVE to pick this product up.
Thanks!!!
Very nices unicorn cookies ! Amazing
I am so thankful for your inspiring ideas and clear instructions. I had never before made sugar cookies nor tried royal icing. My daughter had a unicorn birthday party so I tried to make some similar to yours, because of your detailed instructions I think they turned out pretty well for my first try. Thank you!
Aww, so nice to hear, thank you so much Rachel, for taking the time to share with me. xo
Hi Rachel,
Thank you so so much for your feedback and kind comment! It means so much to me! xo