Watercolor Sugar Cookies
These water colored sugar cookies were really fun to decorate and perfect for getting the kids involved! They are also made without harmful food colors, but still very vibrant! We decorated these for Easter, however you can use this technique for any cookie. I think these watercolor cookies would be great for a kids craft at a birthday party. Read on to get recipes and see how we decorated ours!
For the cut out cookie recipe I used one that I have used for years, however I adapted it to make it gluten-free by substituting the flour with gluten-free one. I also used grass-fed butter. You can find the recipe HERE. These are not sugar free, however you could possibly try substituting the refined sugar with coconut sugar. I have not tried this yet, but would like to the next time I make these! The process for refrigerating the dough in the recipe really helps the cookies to not spread, which is ideal when decorating with royal icing.
When it come to frosting the cookies you will use a royal icing. You will also need a frosting tip to pipe a border around the edge of each cookie. I used a tip #4. For the border you want the royal icing to be slightly stiff so it holds shape. Once the edges are piped you will thin the remainder of the frosting to fill each cookie. We used a white frosting so that the watercolors pop more on the surface. You can find a royal icing recipe HERE. If you do not have a frosting bag to pipe with you can use a ziploc bag, however I recommend using a freezer quality or double bagging them if they are thinner.
Make sure to frost your cookies the day before using the watercolors. This will allow the frosting to completely dry overnight so you have a hard smooth surface for painting.
For the watercolors we used Pop Joy vibrant superfood powders - blue spirulina and pink pitaya. The blue and pink color combo blended nicely to make a really beautiful purple. I recommend using two colors that blend well , especially if the kids are doing the painting!
All you need to do to mix these up is add 1/2 teaspoon of each powder into a small dish and stir in a few drop of water until you achieve the desired consistency. Using a food grade paint brush apply the colors to the cookies. Make sure to not over saturate the cookies with watercolors or the royal icing could begin to melt. Try out different techniques on each cookie, you could even try painting flowers or small shapes. We had fun blending colors, adding lots of dots, brush stokes, and stripes!
