Winter Wonderland: How to Decorate a Snowman Cookie

Winter Wonderland: How to Decorate a Snowman Cookie

Amanda Rafalski embraced the storm hitting the east coast and was inspired to make these adorable snowmen cookies! Follow her step-by-step instructions to bring this snowman winter wonderland to life.

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One of my favorite things is the small detail that can really make a cookie pop. And it doesn’t have to be difficult. A lot of times this can be achieved with texture. Texture is the detail you don’t know is missing until you see it and often times brings about that “a-ha!” moment for me. The texturizing technique for these snowmen is simple and can be used for a variety of applications from snow to sand to fur. Its versatility is awesome!


What you’ll need:
-Rolling Pin (an adjustable pin or guides work best)
-Sugar Cookie Dough (CookieCutterKingdom recipe here)
-Piping Bag
-Parchment Paper
-Small Brush
-Paper Cones
-CookieCutterKingdom’s Frosty The Snowman Cookie Cutter (any size is fine)
-White, Black, Electric Purple, Turquoise, Mint Green, Egg Yellow, and Orange Spectrum Gel Food Coloring

    Roll out your dough between two sheets of parchment paper to ½” thick. Cut out the cookies from chilled dough, bake, and allow to cool completely before decorating. Make flood consistency icing with the colors listed above. (How to make flood consistency royal icing.) Personally, I like to use paper cones for small or detailed piping work and tipless piping bags for larger areas. I keep my icing in portion cups or small bowls.


    Begin by filling in the body of the snowman with white icing in a tipless piping bag. Allow the icing to dry for 8-10 hours. (Stir the icing around if it's been sitting around for awhile to get rid of the separation. To store icing, remove from the icing bag and put in an airtight container. Place container in the fridge.)

    Using the same icing, pipe some lines on the body of the snowman and use a brush to dab the icing to create a snow texture. While the flat white is perfectly acceptable, texturizing the snowman’s body adds some depth and dimension.




    At this point, let the icing dry 1-2 hours before continuing on. Once the body is completely dried, you can add the hat, mittens, and begin the scarf using flood consistency icing. This is when I like to use paper cones. You can make the gloves and scarves all the same, all different, or alternate between a few colors. I used yellow, green, blue, and pink.



    After the hat and scarf have dried for 15-20 minutes, add a thick line of black along the bottom of the hat to create a brim, Create another end of the scarf by pulling icing over the bit wrapped around his neck. Use flood consistency icing.

    Once the brim of the hat has dried, pipe a bead against it to match the color of the scarf and mittens. This will be the beginning of a flower.


     

    Adjust the remaining icing to piping consistency and add a few drops of coloring to darken it for accents.

    Flood icing is thin, 8-10 second icing, meaning when you drag a line across the surface of it out should take 8-10 seconds to smooth back out. You switch from flood to piping by adding more powdered sugar until it holds a medium peak. A medium peak is when a dollop of icing will form a peak if held upright, but the tip will fall over gently.

    The black icing will need to be especially thick as it will be used to make “coal” eyes, mouth, and buttons. You’ll want them to stand out and appear rocky.

    Using a paper cone, pipe misshapen circles for the eyes, mouth, and buttons. For the nose pipe a thin ribbon of orange icing, moving back and forth with increasingly shorter strokes until it resembles a carrot.


    Cut a small hole from the tip of a paper cone and add fringe to the scarf by piping small zig-zag lines to the ends and bead detail to the cuffs of the mittens.



    To complete the flower (the baker in me always wants to type “flour”) pipe a spiral starting at the base of the bead and gradually moving up the bead to the center. Add a bit of green near the bottom for the leaf to finish the cookie.

     

    Hopefully soon there will be enough snow in Chicago that I can make their life-size counterparts!

     

    Enjoy,
    Amanda

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