I haven’t baked and decorated cookies since February. I just couldn’t get myself into the kitchen for a few months. But today I am really happy to be back with an easy project - another flower cookie platter like my last tutorial. This time, though, the cookie flower petals are flat and decorated with a bandana-like pattern that I designed. The royal icing decoration uses the wet-on-wet technique (wet icing piped on wet icing). Once the icing is completely dry, the design is accented with black food marker to complete the bandana pattern. I know there are stencils and even edible printers that can create perfect bandana designs, but this process is a good way to practice the wet-on-wet technique; it's also inexpensive, simple, and quite enjoyable!
- 5 (3 x 2 1/4-in/7.6 x 5.7-cm) teardrop cookies (I used the largest in this set of nested cookie cutters.)
- 1 (1 9/16-in/4.0-cm) round cookie
- Royal icing:
- White piping-consistency, in pastry bag with PME #1 tip (or equivalent)
- Blue and white flood-consistency on the thicker side, in tipless pastry bags with openings equivalent to PME #2 tip (I used navy blue and pink to get the blue shade shown here.)
- Scribe tool
- Black food marker with a superfine nib for detail work (I used this one.)
- Plate
In the picture below, you’ll find a visual of everything you will need, except for the bag with white piping-consistency royal icing, which I used to outline the cookies in Steps 1a and 2a.
If you are new to wet-on-wet technique, check out my past tutorials Wet-on-Wet Sunflower Cookie and Wet-on-Wet Poppy Cookies. In those tutorials, I had the honor of a cameo appearance by @Julia M. Usher who left us with three important tips about the wet-on-wet technique. Be sure to read them!
Step 1: Decorate petal cookies
Before starting to pipe on the cookies, it's best to familiarize yourself with my bandana pattern. The following sketch is the pattern that will get applied in Steps 1a through 1j. You might even consider practicing on parchment paper before attempting to decorate the actual cookies.
Once you're comfortable with the pattern, go ahead and tackle it on the five petal cookies! Decorating each petal should take less than three minutes, as the wet-on-wet technique requires that you work relatively quickly. Ideally, the entire pattern should be piped before the underlying icing begins to set up. You’ll see that you’ll get faster and faster with each petal that you pipe.
a. Work on one petal at a time. Use white piping-consistency royal icing and a PME #1 tip (or equivalent) to outline the cookie about 2 millimeters (a little more than 1/16 inch) from the edge. I left this space because I like the contrast of the icing against the bare cookie dough. Let the icing set.
b. Now flood the cookie with blue flood-consistency royal icing and a PME #2 tip (or equivalent).
c. Work quickly before the blue icing begins to set. Using white flood-consistency royal icing and a PME #2 tip (or equivalent), immediately outline the cookie about 5 millimeters (a little less than 1/4 inch) from the edge. The challenge in this step is to pipe a continuous line of royal icing. However, if the line breaks along the way, it's not the end of the world; the details applied in Step 3 with the black food marker should disguise just about anything. Hint: Start piping at the point of the teardrop. Because the icing is rather fluid, you need only apply a small amount of pressure to the bag. Guide the icing from above with your hand, allowing it to fall onto the underlying blue icing. To avoid a large blob of icing at the point, release pressure on the bag just before finishing the line. The line will sink into the blue icing if the latter has not set.
d. Using the same white icing and bag, pipe a dot of white icing at the point of the white outline; then pipe trios of dots all around the outline, spacing them as evenly as possible.
e. Pipe a white dot in the center of the largest part of the teardrop. This dot will be a flower center. Then, complete the flower by piping five white dots (petals) around the center, each one about double the size of the center.
f. Using blue flood-consistency royal icing and a PME #2 tip (or equivalent), immediately pipe a blue dot in the center of each petal.
g. Now, using the white flood-consistency icing again, pipe five groups of five dots (to resemble little flowers) around the bigger flower you just piped. Hint: For each little flower, start by piping a little dot in between two petals of the big flower, and then add the other four little dots to form a small circle.
h. Once you've piped all five little flowers, pipe five big white dots in between the little flowers. Pipe one more dot to fill the empty space in the area closest to the point of the white teardrop outline.
i. Immediately pipe a blue dot in the middle of each white dot just piped. Let the icing sink into the white icing before moving to the next step.
j. Start with one of the five dots in between the small flowers. Use a scribe tool to drag the blue icing just piped in the direction of the nearest little flower to the right. You’ll end up with a teardrop shape. Repeat this process for the remaining four dots in between the little flowers. For the solitary dot at the point, drag the icing toward the big central flower. As you can see from the tracks (peaks) in the Step 1j photo below, the blue icing was beginning to set by the time I reached this point even though I was working rather quickly. I carefully tapped down the peaks using the scribe tool, and they eventually sank, as you'll see in the video recap at the end of this post. If you happen to get some tracks that you can't tap out, don't worry! They should get covered with the food marker details in Step 3.
k. Just to recap the wet-on-wet technique: If your icings were at the right consistency and you worked sufficiently fast, the white icing should have slowly sunk into the blue icing, leaving you with a smooth, flat surface that looks printed, as in the Step 1k photo below. Let the icing dry completely, ideally in a dehydrator or in front of a fan. The faster the icing dries, the less chance you'll have of any bleeding.
Repeat Steps 1a to 1j for the other four petal cookies.
Step 2: Decorate flower center
a. Using white piping-consistency royal icing and a PME #1 tip (or equivalent), pipe long narrow “U”s all around the edge of the cookie. Then outline the cookie about 2 millimeters (a little more than 1/16 inch) from the edge. The outline should cover the ends of the “U”s, so that only the little arches will be seen once the space inside the outline is flooded in the next step.
b. Flood the cookie using white flood-consistency royal icing and a PME #2 tip (or equivalent). I kept the center plain white with this simple lace border in order to balance the complexity of the bandana pattern. Let the icing dry completely.
Step 3: Add details to bandana design with food marker
Once the icing on the petal cookies is completely dry, it’s time to add the last details to the wet-on-wet design using a fine-nib black food marker. (Important: It's best to allow the icing to set at least 24 hours, as any small nicks in the icing made by the marker can lead to bleeding.) I fully outlined everything except for the five groups of five dots (little flowers) and the dot trios around the outline. In those instances, I outlined only half of each dot. For those of you who are visual learners, here’s a video showing this step in detail:
Now that all of the petal cookies have been decorated, let’s assemble them on a plate.
And place the white round cookie in the center . . .
At last, we are ready for coffee and cookies!
And, as usual, here’s a video recap of the whole process. Enjoy!
See you next month!
Ciao, Manu 💙
Manuela Pezzopane, affectionately called Manu by her friends and family, is the author of the blog feature Made by Manu, where each month she shares the method behind a magical cookie of her own making. In March 2022, Manu also assumed the role of host of our rebranded and reformatted Cookie Connection Challenges: Watch-Learn-Create Series, which debuted in a virtual video format in July 2022. A fan of everything handmade, Manu professes to have tried every possible hobby. However, it wasn’t until the end of 2014, when an American friend invited her to a Christmas cookie exchange, that she first discovered decorated cookies. In 2015, after watching Julia M. Usher's videos and signing up on Cookie Connection, Manu finally attempted her own designs. Since then, cookie decorating has become Manu’s passion, and her mesmerizing video shorts have earned her a large and loyal following throughout the global cookie community. Manu harks from Rome, Italy, where she currently resides. You can email Manu at manubiscottidecorati@gmail.com, follow her on Facebook and Instagram, or explore her past challenges and large library of Made by Manu tutorials here on Cookie Connection.
Photo credit: Manuela Pezzopane
Note: Made by Manu is a Cookie Connection blog feature written by Manuela Pezzopane, where each month she shares the method behind a magical cookie of her own making. This article expresses the views of the author, and not necessarily those of this site, its owners, its administrators, or its employees. To read all of Manuela's past Made by Manu tutorials, click here. And to see all of Cookie Connection's tutorials, click here.
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