A few weeks ago I shared over on IG how the girls and I learned a little bit about Day of the Dead. As much as I wished I could have made sugar skulls, I didn’t have any molds, so I went with the next best thing, sugar cookies! These Day of the Dead sugar cookies are easy make, and fun for all ages to decorate.
Step one:
Step one to making Day of the Dead sugar cookies
Use your favorite cut out sugar cookie recipe and prepare according to directions. Roll the dough out and cut out skulls. If you don’t have a skull cookie cuter you can simply print a picture of a skull and use a knife to cut around the picture. It’s what I did since I surprisingly don’t have a skull cookie cutter. Would it have been easier with a cookie cuter, yes. But one must do what has to be done.
Step Two: add a thin layer of black icing
Next make up a batch of royal icing. I like using Sweetopia’s recipe. Depending on how many skulls you made, you may be able to get away with halving the recipe.
After you make the royal icing take dye a small about black. I have found using AmeriColor icing gel is the easiest way to get black. You don’t have to use half a container to get a decent shade of black that isn’t gray/purpley.
Put a small blob (yes we use technical terms here) of icing in the middle of where the eyes and nose will be. Then spread it around so it’s pretty flat. You are only going for a thin layer of black. Let this dry. It will probably take a few hours, I like to leave mine overnight. Save any unused icing as you will need it for the mouth.
Step Three: flooding
Now that the black has dried it’s time to outline where they eyes and nose will be. I just free handed it, and used an upside down heart for the nose.
Before making your flooding royal icing, be sure to put some piping consistency icing to the side. You will be dying it to decorate your cookies, but you need it to hold it’s shape after your pipe it onto your cookies. After you outline were the eyes and nose are outline the cookie and flood it. Let this dry overnight.
Step Four: Add the mouth
Using black icing make a mouth. Let it dry before going on to the final step.
Step Five: Decorate your Day of the Dead sugar cookies
Now the fun part! Decorating your cookies. Separate the remaining royal icing (the stuff that is piping consistency. Royal icing that has been used for flooding will not work since it won’t hold it’s shape) and dye it as many colors as you would like. Put them into decorating bags (I like the tipless ones from the CookieCountess) and decorate away!
Now the above cookies are the ones that I decorated. My girls didn’t turn out quite like mine, but they still had a blast doing it!
Honestly I don’t know who had more fun, my girls or myself. It had been a little while since I decorated cookies, so it was fun to do it again.
If you search sugar cookies on the blog you will be able to find some of the other ones I have decorated, but a few of my favorite are: Santa star cookies, the cookies from my mom’s surprise 70th birthday , and these Little Mermaid themed cookies from Annabelle’s 5th birthday (this was also my favorite chalkboard design to date).
I hope this has inspired you to try decorating your own Day of the Dead sugar cookies!