I fell in love with these cookies the moment I saw them on Marlyn’s Facebook page. They seemed way beyond my skill level, but when I watched her tutorial, she stated that they would be a great ‘beginner’s project.” I tried to make them back in January, but was not too happy with the outcome. Not only my royal icing was a bit “flat”, but I messed up the dimensions of the design in relation to the cookie size. Since then I’ve been meaning to re-visit the project, and now I finally did. To speak like they do in a certain tent of my past, “I am chuffed.” Truly. Thank you, Marlyn!

These cookies are a labor of love, but so much fun to put together! If you become a supporter of Marlyn on Patreon, all her detailed tutorials and templates are available for you (she has almost 600 posts listed on Patreon). But you can also download just the templates for these cookies on her ko-fi page for a very small fee.

The cookie has three components: a base layer with flooding consistency (two colors), a floral Royal icing transfer, and decorative lines added with piping consistency icing. The most important thing is to make sure the size of your cookie matches well the template of the design.

I could have printed the design a tiny bit smaller, but I am ok with the way it turned out. One easy way to get the cookie ready to work on is to air-brush the exposed region, so that you can easily see where to pipe the flooded base. But you can always just draw the outline with a food pen.

Start by making the Royal icing transfer, keep in mind it must dry for 24 hours so it can be peeled off safely from the parchment paper.

My advice would be to pipe it on acetate instead of parchment. Maybe brands of parchment behave differently, but mine wrinkled a bit, and that resulted in some of the transfers not laying fully flat on the flooded base, particularly the pointed edges.

Next, time to work on the flooding. You will need two colors, teal and green, but as you can see, the green part ended up exactly the same as the color of the Royal icing transfer. Of course, if I wanted to do that, it would never happen! Murphy’s Law. Note to self: create more contrast next time.

The final details rely on piping fine lines, the step that can truly make or break your cookies. The Royal icing transfer is super smart, because it serves as a guide, but you still need to get the consistency of the icing right. I am always afraid of it, but keep picking projects that force me to do it, because that’s the only way to improve.

The cookie also works on a white background, but it is not as dramatic, in my opinion. At any rate, this cookie shape is one of my favorites to play with. So many possibilities!

I hope you enjoyed this post, and consider following Marlyn on IG and Facebook. She comes up with free tutorials at least twice every week, and her creativity and skill will blow your mind.