Fall Watercolour Sugar Cookies
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Are you ready to learn a super fun & easy way to make pretty sugar cookies for Fall?
I call this technique watercolour but we are actually going to be mixing the colours with alcohol, not water. All you have to do is cover the cookie in white icing and let it dry a bit, then dot your mix of gel colours & alcohol all over your cookie. The colours blend into one another giving your cookie a fun watercolour effect with very little effort!
After the watercolour dries you can add some veining to your cookies with royal icing and edible markers and you have beautiful fall leaves ready to share with your family and friends (or just admire and eat yourself!)
These would be a perfect dessert for Thanksgiving!
Here’s a list of supplies you’ll need to make these:
Baked sugar cookies (you can find my recipe here. I designed and 3d printed my own cookie cutters for these but you can use any leaf shapes you have or like - these ones are cute! )
Royal icing (you’ll only need a tiny amount - you can find a recipe for a super simple royal icing at the end of this post)
Gel food colouring (I used Americolor lemon yellow, burgundy, red, gold, and orange)
A few paintbruses
Some small bowls or a paint palette
Rose gold lustre dust (totally optional, but I love the added sparkle)
Edible markers (also optional - you can use royal icing for this part if you prefer)
Small piping bags and#3 or #4 and #1 or #2 tips (unless your bags are tipless)
Everclear or vodka (Everclear works best but I know you can’t get in in some places. Vodka will do in a pinch, but your colours won’t spread as much)
How do I make them?
Fill a piping bag with a #3 or #4 tip (or a small hole cut in the tip if using tipless bags) with white glaze icing. Then, take a small bowl and add some white glaze to it. Thin out that glaze with a few drops of water (not too much, you want it to be about the consistency of honey or molasses). Outline your leaf and then spoon a small amount of your thinned icing into the middle of your cookie. Spread out the icing with a chopstick or a small spoon until your whole cookie is covered. Don’t add too much icing to the cookie or your icing may start to flow off the edges.
Tip: Only outline 2-3 cookies at a time. If your outline dries before you fill in your cookie, it will be visible.
Let your icing dry for at least 30 minutes. While you’re waiting, grab your chosen gel food colours and add a drop of each to a section on your palette or separate small bowls. Add a couple teaspoons of Everclear or Vodka to each colour and let them sit. Don’t stir your colour in or it will be chunky. Just let the colour dissolve into the alcohol while you wait.
Once your icing has dried a bit and your alcohol colours look really vivid, grab your paintbrushes! It’s time for the fun part. Use a separate paintbrush for each colour. Dip your paintbrush into one colour and dab gently in several spots on your cookie. Repeat with 1-2 more colours per cookie. The colours will blend into each other as they sit. Experiment and see which colour combos you like best! The alcohol will dry really quickly, especially if you are using Everclear. Repeat this process until you’ve watercoloured all of your leaves.
Optional step: Grab your rose gold lustre dust and put a small amount in a bowl or in a section of your palette. Add a few drops of alcohol to make a thick liquid, then take a paintbrush and spatter some rose gold onto your cookies.
Take a small amount of royal icing and colour it whatever colour you’d like your leaf veins to be. I did some in burgundy and some in golden yellow. Put the icing in a piping bag with a #1 or #2 tip, or in a tipless bag with a tiiiiiiny hole cut in the end. Pipe stems and centre veins on all of your leaves. You can add extra veins here with the royal icing if you don’t have edible markers.
Let your leaves dry overnight, then add extra veins with edible markers (unless you did it with royal in the last step) and ta-dah, you have beautiful watercolour leaf sugar cookies! I’d love to see your creations, so drop a photo in the comment section if you decide to try these.
Happy decorating!
Royal Icing
Ingredients
- 60g Egg Whites (approximately 2 egg whites)
- 340g (a generous 2 1/2 cups) Icing Sugar
Instructions
- Place egg whites and cing sugar into a mixer bowl and mix on low speed with a paddle attachment until soft peaks form. Store in a container with a tight fitting lid in the fridge.
- If your icing is too stiff, add a few drops of water at a time to thin to desired consistency.
- If your icing is too runny, add more icing sugar a tablespoon at a time and continue to mix until you reach the desired consistency.