Painting on Cookies
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Learn everything you need to know about painting on cookies. From what the best edible paint for cookies is, to techniques for painting fondant cookies or royal iced cookies, stamped fondant cookies, watercolour cookies, freehand painted designs and tracing designs onto cookies.
Painting on cookies is a fun way to make beautifully decorated cookies, and believe it or not, you don’t have to be an artist to do it.
In this tutorial, I’ll show you four different ways of painting cookies – freehand painting, watercolour, painting over a traced design, and painting on stamped fondant cookies.
The first three techniques can be done on either fondant cookies or royal icing cookies, but if you’re new to painting then I recommend starting with fondant, as it’s the most forgiving.
We’ll also talk about the different types of edible paint and what they’re suited for, what tools and supplies you’ll need, and the easiest ways to clean up when you’re done painting.
So grab your easel (just kidding, you don’t need one of those) and let’s get started!
Types of Edible Paint for Cookies
First you need to choose a type of edible paint. There are four main types, and they all have pros and cons, so let’s talk about those. But, if you want the long story short – I always recommend glaze-based paints as the best and easiest to work with.
Ready-Made Edible Paint
Glaze-based paint – I prefer to use a glaze-based edible paint, like Sweet Sticks Edible Art Paint, and that’s what you’ll see me using in this tutorial. These paints dry completely, are smudge-proof once dry and are available in matte and metallic finishes in a wide range of colours and shades. You can buy the paints from their website and many cake decorating suppliers. The paints can be used on fondant and royal icing.
There are other brands that make glaze-based paints, such as Sugarflair and Squires Kitchen, so see what is available where you live.
Confectioner’s glaze (shellac), which is used in glaze-based paints is not vegan, so if you make vegan cookies you should choose a paint that doesn’t contain glaze.
Glaze-based paints also contain alcohol, and while the alcohol evaporates, if you’re making cookies for someone who doesn’t consume alcohol for personal or religious reasons you may wish to choose a paint without alcohol.
Other ready-made edible paints – There are other water-based and alcohol-based paints on the market. I haven’t tested any of those so I’m not making recommendations, but if you’re choosing a different paint, try to find one that says it is smudge-proof.
Homemade Paint
Gel colour paint – To make paint with gel food colouring, you mix a drop of gel with a few drops of water or vodka. It’s easy to make and convenient if you already have gel colours, but it does not dry completely and tends to remain slightly sticky to the touch. It makes a very shiny paint and colours more likely to bleed together. The moisture in the paint can start to dissolve royal icing, so it should be used sparingly on that. Use a good-quality gel colouring such as Americolor, Chefmaster or Sugarflair.
Powdered colour paint – Powdered colour mixed with alcohol (usually a high % alcohol like rose spirit/cake decorator’s alcohol or Everclear, but vodka will also work) makes a nice matte paint but is prone to smudging. You can also mix the powdered colour with edible glaze rather than alcohol, making it smudge-proof and similar to the glaze-based paint I mentioned above. This can be used on fondant or royal icing. Make sure you’re buying food-grade, edible powdered colour or lustre dust. Sweet Sticks have a great range of these, too.
Tools & Supplies
- Paintbrushes – The paintbrushes you need will depend on the design you’re painting. For fine lines or words, a fine, pointed tip brush is best. For a wash of colour over the whole cookie, use a wide flat brush. I like to have a different brush for each colour that I’m using, but you can clean your brush in between colours instead. Sweet Sticks have a great selection of brushes. I also like the Sugar Crafty brushes.
- A paint palette – or other container to put your paint into while you work. A regular palette is great for general painting, for watercolour I like to use one like the one pictured on the bottom right, as it has I can put the colour in the round space and then use the other space to thin it down to watercolour consistency.
- Cake decorator’s alcohol – (95% alcohol) also known as rose spirit, Everclear, dipping solution or food-grade ethanol. This is used to thin the glaze-based paint. I sometimes use isopropyl alcohol to clean my brushes afterwards (more about this below), but you cannot use this to thin down the paint as it isn’t food-safe.
- Pipette – handy for adding alcohol a drop at a time to thin the paint.
- Toothpicks or ice cream sticks – for mixing the paint.
- A small jar or plastic container – to put alcohol in to clean your paintbrush between colours.
- Q-tips/cotton buds – handy for fixing mistakes. I like the ones with a pointy end.
- Paper, a pencil and scissors – if you’re tracing a design onto your cookies.
- Sponges – Sea sponges and makeup sponges are both great for adding a textured look to the paint. I like sea sponges for adding a splotchy watercolour effect. These are not tested to be food-safe, so if you’re selling your cookies you should take that into account to comply with your local food laws. I’ve not yet seen a problem with them, and food photographers have been using makeup sponges to prop pieces of food up for years, so do with that information what you will. Wash the sponges well with hot soapy water and let them dry before using.
- and of course, you’ll need your cookies and some fondant or royal icing.
Preparing the Cookies
Use a sturdy cookie recipe to ensure your cookies don’t fall apart as you work on them. I used my gluten free sugar cookie recipe, but I can also recommend Sweetapolita’s sugar cookie recipe if you don’t need gluten free.
I prefer to paint on fondant-covered cookies, which is what I’ll be showing you in this tutorial, but the basic technique can also be used on royal-iced cookies. For those who are new to painting on cookies, I suggest starting with fondant, as it is easier to work with.
If you’re tracing/freehand painting a design onto fondant cookies, you’ll need to cover them with a flat piece of fondant and I have a tutorial showing how to cover sugar cookies with fondant you may want to check out.
If you want to paint over a stamped design on a cookie, you can see my stamped fondant cookie tutorial for how to use those, then come back here to paint.
For royal iced cookies, I recommend Sweetopia’s royal icing recipe (and she has great tutorials for using it, too.)
Cover your cookies with fondant or royal ice them at least 24 hours before you want to paint them, and allow the icing to harden. Exactly how long that will take will depend on the humidity where you live. Firm icing will be less likely to dent as you paint.
For fondant cookies, once you’ve covered your cookies, roll out some leftover fondant and set it aside to dry. Then before you paint, you can use that piece of fondant to practice and test out your paint colours before you start on your cookies.
How to Paint on Cookies
I’m going to cover four different ways to paint on cookies: freehand painting, watercolour painting, tracing a design onto your cookie to paint over, and painting onto stamped fondant cookies.
But first, let’s go through a few of my favourite general cookie painting tips:
General Cookie Painting Tips
- Mix the paint well before you start painting. For ready-made paint, use a skewer or toothpick to stir them and then give them a good shake to make sure all the pigment that settles at the bottom of the bottle is mixed in.
- If you’re mixing up a custom paint colour, be sure to mix enough for your whole design. It can be tricky to make the same shade again later, so if making multiple cookies with the same design that need to match, make sure you mix up enough paint for all of them.
- It’s best to keep dark colours to a minimum as they can stain people’s teeth when used in large amounts. I prefer to only use black paint for outlining (like I’ll show you on the bunny cookie below).
- Sit somewhere comfortable, and make sure your arm is well-supported by the table while you paint.
- Don’t be afraid to move the cookie around – you don’t need to contort your hand to follow lines or reach over wet areas of paint, just turn the cookie.
- To fix mistakes when using glaze-based paint on fondant, dip a Q-tip (cotton bud) in alcohol, dab off the excess on a paper towel, and gently rub away the mistake. With water-based paint, you can do the same with a Q-tip dipped in water, but keep in mind that the water will leave the icing slightly shiny (it starts to dissolve the sugar in the icing), so keep this for small mistakes only. For larger mistakes, you may need to remove the icing from the cookie and start over.
- Remember that no one will look as closely at the cookies as you will while painting them. Step back and look at your work from arm’s length, you might see tiny mistakes close up, but no one will see them from further away.
Now let’s put it into practice!
Freehand Painting on Cookies
Freehand painting on cookies with edible paint is pretty much the same as freehand painting anything.
It helps to work in layers, letting the paint dry in between. If you try to paint over thick, wet paint, it will smudge.
Here’s how I did this simple floral design on fondant-covered cookies, using the Sweet Sticks edible art paint. This kind of design can also be done with a water-based paint.
Start by using a fine, pointed paintbrush to paint grass along the bottom of the cookie. Touch the tip of the brush to the bottom edge of the cookie and flick upwards in short strokes. Using 2-3 different shades of green gives more dimension.
To make the flowers, draw a long stem, then add dots of purple along the sides at the end. I used three different shades of purple, but if you only have one, you can add a bit of white to add some variation.
Add as many flower stems as you want, and add more grass and leaves to fill in any gaps. It’s nice to play around with different paint consistencies to get different leaf and grass textures.
Once you’ve finished painting your cookies, leave them to dry before storing or packaging them.
Watercolour Cookies
This watercolour cookie technique works on both fondant and royal icing, although I do find it works better on fondant.
For the best results, use a glaze-based paint and high-strength alcohol, or make your own paint using gel or powdered food colouring mixed with vodka or cake decorator’s alcohol
Ironically enough, water-based edible paint is not well suited to watercolour on cookies, as the extra water you’ll add to thin it down will start to dissolve the icing.
Start by thinning down your paint to a watercolour consistency. Add the alcohol a few drops at a time, and test the paint on a paper towel, or a scrap piece of fondant before painting on the cookie.
Here I started with a lighter wash of colour then added splotches of the darker pink and purple. I keep a small dish with alcohol nearby to rinse off the brush when needed.
You can play around and get different effects by:
- Adding darker colours over light
- Adding more colour to the wet paint, or letting it dry slightly and then adding more
- Adding drops of straight alcohol
- Using different brushes, or using sponges
Once the watercolour cookies are dry you can paint on top with undiluted paint to add words or other details, if you like.
Tracing and Painting Designs on Cookies
Tracing a design on a cookie and painting over it is an easy way to write on a cookie without having to have beautiful handwriting.
It’s also a great way to get a more complex design onto your cookie, and then all you have to do is fill it in. This is also how I like to paint on a cake.
You can use this technique on fondant-covered cookies or royal-iced cookies. Make sure you leave at least 24 hours for the fondant or royal icing to dry before you start to paint – if the icing isn’t hard enough, you will dent it.
To trace the design onto the cookie, you’ll need to use a pencil. Pencil leads are not made of actual lead, they’re made of graphite, which is considered non-toxic and not dangerous in the small amounts used to lightly trace a design onto icing.
However, if you’re not comfortable with that, you can carefully trace it onto slightly soft fondant (not royal icing) to leave a debossed design that you can then paint over. Follow the directions below, but skip the step of pencil tracing the design on the back of the paper, and press slightly harder when tracing the design onto the cookie.
This technique works best when you paint over the design with darker colours – lighter colours will show the pencil lines through them and the colour will become muddied.
To trace a design with a pencil, start by printing out your design at a size that will fit on your cookie.
Flip the paper over and hold it up to a window (or bring up a white screen on your phone or tablet and use that) so you can see the design, then trace over the lines with a sharp pencil onto the back side of the paper.
Trace around the design using the cookie cutter you used to cut out the cookie and fondant and cut out the paper in that shape.
To stop the paper from moving around as you trace, use a few tiny balls of soft fondant to stick the paper on top of the hardened fondant on the cookie.
Flip the paper over, pencil lines side down, and press gently on the blobs of fondant to attach the paper.
Using a slightly blunt pencil, trace over the design. Use gentle pressure, enough to transfer the design onto the cookie, but not so much pressure that you tear the paper or dent the fondant too much.
Lift one edge of the paper and check that the design is fully transferred. If it’s not, place it back down and trace again (this only works if the paper doesn’t shift, so be very careful!)
Remove the little blobs of fondant with the edge of a fondant smoother, or rub them off with another little blob of soft fondant. Because the fondant underneath is dry, the little pieces should come off easily.
I like to keep the printed design nearby for reference as I paint.
Paint over the lines using your edible paint. Do this in a well-lit area or use a desk lamp to see the traced lines more easily.
Don’t load too much paint onto the brush, or you will end up with blobs of paint. If the paint begins to dry up as you work, add a drop of alcohol to thin it down again.
When painting a design that has multiple colours, paint one colour at a time and let it dry slightly before moving on to the next colour (you can start a production line with multiple cookies, by the time you get back to the first cookie it should be dry enough to work on.)
To see how I finished decorating these hand-painted birthday cookies with a cute under-the-sea theme, head over to my Edible Sand for Cakes and Cookies tutorial.
Painting a Fondant Stamped Cookie
I love painting on stamped fondant cookies because the design is right there for you, and all you have to do is follow the lines.
You’ll need a raised fondant stamp, also known as an embossing stamp. You can read more about using fondant stamps in my How to Make Stamped Fondant Cookies tutorial.
This cute floral bunny embossing stamp is one of my favourites from Design at 409.
Make sure you stamp the fondant and cover the cookies at least 24 hours before you want to paint. Use very firm pressure when stamping, to ensure the raised design is nice and pronounced, which will make it much easier to paint.
If you want to do a wash of colour over the cookie or fill in the recessed area of the design, do that first. Thin down the paint to a watercolour consistency and sponge or paint the colour onto the fondant. Allow this layer of paint to dry before continuing.
To paint the lines, use the paint without thinning it down (or only thin it with just a drop of alcohol). The thicker the consistency of the paint, the less likely it is to drip or run off the raised design. Use a fine paintbrush with a pointy tip.
You can choose to work top-to-bottom or left-to-right (or vice versa if you’re a leftie) to avoid smudging the paint, but also remember you can turn the cookie as you work, to get the right angle.
For this bunny design, I filled in the middle of the design first, then worked my way around the edges.
I find it easier to paint with the brush slightly on an angle to the lines of the design rather than straight along them, as pictured below. It means the bristles are less likely to slip down the sides of the raised design and make a mess.
As you’ll see in the photo above, there will likely be areas that you need to touch up, where the paint isn’t dark enough or there are missing bits. (You probably won’t have as many as this, because you won’t be trying to film and take photographs while you paint).
Let the first layer of paint dry before adding more, as adding more when the paint is wet will just shift it around and make it look more patchy.
Drying the Painted Cookies
Arrange the cookies on a baking sheet and leave them to dry. Glaze-based paints dry quickly, but if there are areas with thicker layers of paint, these may take a few hours to dry.
To speed things up, you can use a fan, or if your oven has the option to use the fan with no heat, you can place the tray in the oven with the door cracked open slightly. This will circulate the air and help the paint dry faster.
Make sure the paint is completely dry before storing or packaging the cookies.
Clean Up
Glaze-based paint
Glaze-based paints need to be cleaned with high-strength alcohol like cake decorator’s alcohol (also known as rose spirit) or Everclear. Vodka generally isn’t strong enough.
Wipe as much paint off the brushes as you can onto a paper towel, then clean them with a small amount of alcohol in a small container. Repeat if there is still a lot of paint on the bristles.
The paint is highly pigmented and can stain the bristles of some brushes, so the colour may not all come off.
If you’re using isopropyl to clean your brushes, then once you’ve followed the steps above you’ll also need to give them a wash with some dish soap and rinse with water.
Use your fingers to shape the bristles of the brush back into shape while they’re still damp, then lay them flat on a cloth or paper towel to dry.
To clean the paint palette, wipe out the remaining paint with paper towels (you can let it dry out a bit first if you like) then clean them with a paper towel dipped in alcohol. I usually give them an extra wash with some dish soap afterwards, then rinse and let them dry.
Water-based paint/Gel-colour paint
If you’re using water-based edible paint, or homemade paint made with food colour and water or vodka, the brushes and palettes can be cleaned up with water and a little dish soap if needed. Reshape the paintbrush bristles and lay the brushes flat to dry.
Painting on Cookies FAQ
More Tutorials You May Like…
How to Stick Fondant to Fondant (a Guide to Edible Glue)
Easy Watercolour Cake
Edible Sand for cakes and Cookies
I love seeing what you create! Please tag me in your painted cookie pictures or videos on Instagram @sweetness.and.bite or Facebook @sweetnessandbite so I can see 💜
Natalie
xx