Butterfly Cookies

I had fun baking and decorating butterfly shaped sugar cookies for my friend's daughter's second birthday. To make your own butterfly cookies, follow these steps.

Click on this post for my favourite sugar cookie recipe. Choose the royal icing recipe that you like best. I am still learning how to make the perfect royal icing. I still have difficulty avoiding all those air bubbles!

Select icing colors to tint the royal icing. I chose black for the border, and Wilton velvet, teal and red for flooding.

Next, add the icing colors into small bowls of royal icing and mix. Black requires a very generous amount of color before it reaches its darkest shade. Repeat for other desired colors.

 Pour the colours for flooding into squeeze bottles.

It makes it easy to flood the cookies and get into the curvy areas.

Pipe the border of the cookies. Let dry.

 Creating feathered stripes on wet flood...

Flood cookie with desired color.

Immediately, squeeze lines in contrasting color on each wing.

Drag a toothpick through both lines toward the middle of the butterfly. This will create a feathered effect that that will blend into the original flooded color of the butterfly.  

For a fancy houndstooth butterfly, alternate colors in the shape of the cookie until all areas are flooded without any spaces remaining.

 Drag a tooth pick diagonally from the bottom left wing of the butterfly to the top right wing, and back down again just a quarter of an inch over this time. Continue to alternate toothpick direction with each row, on opposite wing.

Or, just add some simple details.

They look so bright!

Then personalize for loot bags!

The kids just love them!

Since I had so much space on these cookies, I tried a different type of lettering this time. I think it looks pretty cute! 

Happy Second Birthday Addison!