EASY Candy Cane Technique for Decorated Cookies

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Are you ready to learn a super fun & easy way to make a candy cane design on any cookie?

I saw this technique somewhere last Christmas and it blew my mind!

It’s a wet-on-wet decorating technique. For anybody who doesn’t know what that means: wet-on-wet is when you create a design on your icing without letting the first layer dry first. This means that along with it being easy, it’s also a fast way to make a cute design on your cookies.

Here’s a list of supplies you’ll need to make these:

Baked sugar cookies (you can find my recipe here. You can use any shape you’d like. I used a mug shape that I designed and 3D printed, but you can find a cute mug cookie cutter here!
Glaze icing - this is my favourite icing to decorate with, but it you have a go-to cookie decorating icing already, you can use it.
Gel food colouring (I used Americolor soft pink, super red, and bright white, as well as Wilton Brown for the coffee)
Small piping bags and#3 or #4 and #1 or #2 tips (unless your bags are tipless)
A scribe tool - I like these ones.

How do I make them?

Make your colours - if you are doing a mug cookie like mine you will need white, a soft pink, red, and brown.
Use a #3 or #4 round tip for the brown and pink icings, and a #1 or a #2 roud tip for the white and red icings. Fill all of your piping bags and have them ready to go, along with your scribe tool before you start.
Take your bag of pink icing and outline and fill in your cookie. I left a space at the top of mine to fill in with “coffee” later (see photo).
While your pink icing is still wet & working quickly, add red dots in the shape of a candy cane to several places on your cookie, leaving small spaces between each dot. I did 5 dots of red for each candy cane. Then, quickly add white dots between each dot of red. You might need to practice the technique a few times before it’s perfect. You can always scrape the icing off of your cookie and try again if you need!
Still working quickly before your icing dries, take your scribe tool and run it down the very edge of one candy cane, then back up the very edge of the other side. This will create a stripey effect. Do this to all of your candy canes. Let your icing dry for about 20 minutes.
Last, fill in the top of your mug with brown icng for the coffee. Ta-dah! Now you have the most adorable candy cane mug cookie.