Butterfly Cookies With Royal Icing That Look Almost Too Real

Butterfly cookies are fun to decorate since there is a lot of space for colouring the wings. Butterfly cookies can be decorated with simple designs or small patterns that will make each cookie unique.

Royal icing enables you to make smooth wings, dots, lines, and colour mixes. Simple butterfly cookies can be made to look pretty using the wet on wet royal icing technique due to natural colour mixing.

If you are following a butterfly cookie recipe, select a good butterfly cookie cutter for an even shape. A large cutter works particularly well as you have more room to decorate.

Royal icing butterfly cookies are nice treats to have at parties, as gifts, or when doing spring-themed baking.

What You Need

Make sure that all the items are within easy reach so that you won’t have to stop and look for the tools each time you want to decorate.

• Butterfly cookie cutters (in the size you need) or plunger cutter.
• Flood and piping consistency Royal icing
• Gel food colours according to the designs of the wings
• Scribe tool or toothpick
• Number 2 or 3 fine round piping tip
• Tipless piping bags and couplers
• Parchment paper for practicing
• Icing sugar for making royal icing and modifying its consistency

Mini veined butterfly plunger cutters and the beautiful butterfly plunger cutters come in various wing sizes so that you are able to create different kinds of butterflies out of the same cookie dough. A Whimsical butterfly debosser and cutter set is another great choice. It allows pressing the wing pattern into the soft dough of the cookies before baking. After baking, you can use this pattern as a guide to decorate your cookies.

Royal Icing Consistency

Consistency is an important consideration in preparing royal icing cookies. When your icing is either too thin or too thick, it may become very difficult to decorate the cookies.

Use two separate consistencies: the flood consistency, which works well in filling the wings and needs to settle to a smooth layer within 15 to 20 seconds; and the piping consistency, which should hold a soft peak and is good for outlining and body decorations. For wet on wet royal icing work you will need to use both icings while they are still wet so have all your colours ready before you start. You’ll also need to add some drops of concentrated gel food colouring. The stronger the gel, the less you use. A good gel food colour gives you good solid wing colours without compromising the icing consistency.

The Wet on Wet Technique

Wet on wet royal icing produces the fabulous marbled, dragged effects seen on the most stunning butterfly cookies.

Make sure you apply your base colour first while the icing is still wet. Apply dots, lines, or blobs of a contrasting colour on top of it. Using the scribe tool, make designs of shapes like teardrops, feathers, and chevrons while the icing is wet. Do this continuously, since the icing must remain wet for the colours to blend easily. Once a thin crust forms on the surface, it becomes difficult to move the design smoothly. The result looks complex but takes only seconds per wing.

For the body, pipe a small elongated oval in dark piping consistency royal icing down the centre where the wings meet. Add thin curved antennae at the head. Before the icing on the body dries up, lightly press it into some sanding sugar to give it a rough texture that contrasts with that of the wings. Piping supplies including tipless bags and fine round tips give you the most control over the body and antenna detail work.

Painting & Airbrushing of Wings

Not all butterfly cookie recipes are designed based on piped icing alone.

A warm gradient base is created by airbrushing a base wash of yellow and orange across the wing. The wing vein detail that makes the design truly realistic is hand-painted on top with a fine brush and gel food colour in black linework. Make an edible watercolour wash by combining gel food colour with clear alcohol or vanilla extract. Paint on a dried white iced wing, then leave to dry really well. Pipe black veins on top for a stained-glass effect. The butterfly kisses and fairy wishes cookie stamp pressed into soft iced cookies before they are dried gives an embossed wing pattern that looks lovely airbrushed over the top.

Floral Butterfly Cookies

Floral butterfly cookies are made by piping wing designs onto the cookies, and attaching separately made royal icing flowers to them.

First, dry the butterfly wings well. Make cherry blossom, rose, or daisy flowers with the royal icing using the petal piping tip and then dry them. Place the flowers on the butterfly wings surface by sticking them with small portions of fresh royal icing. Piped leaves and stems can be added to fill the gaps between flowers. If you need more detail, try brushing a small amount of edible lustre dust on the dried wings prior to decorating with flowers. This will give your cookies a shimmery finish and enhance the colours. Go slowly through all of the steps and avoid trying to rush anything.

The Madame Butterfly 3D large lace mat is designed to make a detailed lace butterfly design using a cake lace mixture, allowing you to decorate your cookies without piping. SugarSoft edible butterflies are instant butterfly edible cake decorations that press onto royal icing cookies when you are short on time.

Fixing Mistakes

Mistakes happen. Especially when it’s your first time making royal icing butterfly cookies.

• Wet icing errors: Brush off icing with a clean damp brush while still wet and before it begins to crust
• Wet on wet drag went wrong: immediately drag back in the opposite direction to correct the pull
• Dried icing on fondant: Remove gently with a just damp cotton bud from the edges inwards
• Uneven wing flooding: Pop large air bubbles with a scribe tool immediately before the surface skins over.

You don’t have to have perfect wing symmetry. Real butterfly wings are not identical, and small differences between the two sides always look natural rather than wrong. The range of cake decorating tools including scribe tools, fine brushes and ball tools gives you what you need for both creating and correcting detail work during every stage.

Butterfly Cake Decorations (Other Than Cookies)

The butterfly design that you make on royal icing cookies can be done easily on cupcakes and your main cake too. Butterflies can be pressed into buttercream icing or fondant and incorporated with ease into all of your desserts.

For cakes try butterfly cake toppers in pink, purple, blue, orange, white, rainbow or gold stripe glitter finishes. The hand painted pink glitter, gold stripe fairy blue, rainbow and purple DIY toppers are ready to press into buttercream or fondant.

Butterfly and bee silicone mould and butterfly trio silicone mould Make handmade pieces in one press with fondant butterflies. Make delicate shapes from modelling paste with the lace butterfly kit silicone mould.

Finish cupcakes with butterfly and blossom sprinkle charms. Decorate with pink butterfly fairy cake cases and purple butterfly fairy cake cases for colour. Good edible cake decorations and silicone butterfly moulds allow you to make the same design on cookies, cupcakes and your main celebration cake.