SUPPLIES & TOOLS:
- Favorite sugar cookie cut-out recipe
- Wilton® royal icing or homemade royal icing
- Wilton® gel food colors
- Rolling pin
- Cookie sheets
- Graduation cap cookie cutter
- Silicone baking mats or parchment paper
- Icing decorating bottles, bags & icing tips, or parchment cones
- Scribe tool or toothpick
DIRECTIONS:
- Mix your favorite sugar cookie cut-out recipe.
- Divide dough into chunks and roll out until dough is 1/4" thick. Make sure to flour your rolling surface lightly.
- Use graduation cap cookie cutter to cut out dough and place onto silicone mat or parchment paper lined cookie sheets. Try placing rolled out dough onto cookie sheets and freeze for 5 minutes before cutting out shapes. This will help to prevent dough from becoming misshapen when moving and baking.
- Follow baking instructions according to your favorite recipe and cool completely before decorating.
- Use the recipe on Wilton’s meringue powder to mix up royal icing, or use pre-made icing.
- Scoop out icing and gradually thin with water to get your piping and flood consistencies. Tint with food coloring to desired colors. For these graduation cookies, piping consistency is needed for the base color, tassel color, and "congrats" color. Flood consistency is only needed for the base color. Place these into either bags or bottles. If using decorating tips, #1 or #2 are best for piping and #3 or #4 are best for flooding.
- Start to decorate the base layer of the cookies by outlining with piping consistency icing, then flooding. If needed, use a scribe tool or toothpick to spread icing and pop air bubbles.
- Let base layer dry for a couple hours before adding additional details.
- Once base layer has crusted over, use the tassel piping icing to layer lines to create the tassel. Use the piping icing in the base color to outline the graduation cap and any other lines desired to give the cap dimension.
- Use piping consistency icing to freehand "congrats" onto the cookie.
- Allow cookies to dry completely, at least 8-10 hours before packaging them up.