I made these Saint Patrick’s Day cookies a few years ago, and they were such a hit. Not to mention they were super easy to make! I’ll try to walk you through how I decorated them so you can create a similar look.
Here is a list of supplies I would recommend for baking and decorating your baked cookies for St. Patrick’s day:
First things first, you need to make your shamrock sugar cookies. Follow my sugar cookie recipe in this previous blog post.
For your cookie cutter, here are a few options you can use:
Once your dough is made, and your cookies have been baked and cooled, you are ready to make royal icing! You can purchase a premade mix of royal icing if you aren’t up to making it from scratch. Here are a few of my favorite brands.
If you’re up for the challenge, here is a quick blog post on making your own royal icing.
Let’s get started with decorating these cookies for St. Patrick’s day!
Once you have made your royal icing, you are ready to start decorating. I did three different designs for my shamrock cookies, which was easy!
Use a Plaid Pattern design to decorate your baked cookies
The first design I will walk you through is the plaid pattern. This design is really simple. You’ll first need to fill three piping bags with royal icing. One with white royal icing, one with lime green royal icing, and one with dark green royal icing. I like my royal icing consistency to be somewhat runny but so that it also holds its shape. I would say the
consistency of paint, but a little thicker. If your royal icing is too stiff, add a little water to thin it out.
After your piping bags are filled with the correct colors, you will begin piping the outside of your shamrock, tracing the outside of your cookie with your white royal icing-filled piping bag. Once you have entirely piped around the cookie, you can go back with your white royal icing and slowly fill in the center of the cookie until the cookie is completely flooded with royal icing. Be careful not to overfill. Then you will take your lime green piping bag and pipe three straight lines onto your cookie. Repeat the same with your dark green piping bag. Then repeat that same step in the opposite direction on the shamrock cookie, giving you a plaid design look.
A Dots Shamrock Cookies for St. Patrick’s Day
The next cookie design we are going to cover is even easier. The dots shamrock cookies follow a very similar process. Trace the outside of your cookies in whatever desired royal icing color, flood your cookies, and then take a different color and pipe on small dots as you see fit. The key is piping while the royal icing is still wet. This allows the royal icing to settle and lay flat.
Decorating St. Patrcik’s Day cookies with a Marble Cookie Look
The last and possibly the easiest design is the marble cookie look. For this design, you will need a small shallow bowl filled with a thin layer of white royal icing. Pipe some lime green and dark green icing into the bowl. There is no rhyme or reason to how much or the design you pipe into the bowl.
I prefer a few small lines. Then take a toothpick and swirl the royal icing around. Giving a slight swirling look in the bowl. Please don’t overdo it, though. You don’t want to over-mix the royal icing. Once that is done, take a baked cookie and press the cookie into the swirled royal icing mixture and then slowly pull it out of it and place it onto a cookie sheet. Use a toothpick to clean up any edges if needed. It’s that simple!
I waited for my royal icing to dry for 12 hours before returning and adding some edible gold dust to my cookies. This process is pretty simple. Mix a small amount of edible dust with a small amount of vodka, then use a thin paintbrush to paint the gold mixture as you see fit onto your cookie.
For a better visual, you can refer to this video.
Hopefully, you found this blog post helpful! I promise these cookies are so easy to do, even for a beginner or first-time cookie decorator!
