My twins recently turned 6 and since they love drawing, painting, and creating, it was only natural to have an art themed birthday party. I am no expert baker but I did want to make some cute paint palette cookies for an art party. This is one of the cutest cookie recipes we have made here at Mess for Less. Though these can be a bit time consuming to make the results are worth it!
You will need:
- Sugar cookie dough (you can make your own, but I just bought a mix which was a lot easier)
- Paint palette cookie cutter and paint brush cookie cutter if desired
- Large straw
- Royal Icing - Meringue powder is an essential ingredient in royal icing
- Icing Colors
- Decorating brush
- Decorating squeeze bottle
Start out with your favorite sugar cookie recipe or mix. Roll out the dough and cut out the palette using the cookie cutter. To make the finger hole in the palette, use a large straw.
Bake according to recipe directions. When the cookies baked, sometimes the the finger hole gets smaller. If that is the case, when they come out of the oven you can use the straw to cut out the excess dough and make a larger circle. Allow the cookies to thoroughly cool.
The cookies will be decorated with royal icing. My favorite royal icing recipe is from Wilton. I followed the directions near the bottom of the page for thinned royal icing.
For the base color on the palette, I used plain white icing. To make it easier to ice the cookie, I poured the icing into a squeeze bottle and outlined the cookie with the icing. I did the whole batch of cookies and let the outlines dry. Then I returned and filled in the rest of the cookies using the squeeze bottle.
I let the cookies dry overnight. The next day, I made another batch of royal icing and divided it up into five small bowls where I added icing colors l to create the "paint colors" for the palette.
The easiest way I found to add the paint colors was to use a decorating brush. I simply dipped the brush in the colored icing and went through all the cookies and painted on each color. I allowed these cookies to dry overnight and then I froze them. If you don't plan to use these right away, they freeze well. Simply stack with sheets of wax paper in between and cover before freezing.
I removed the cookies from the freezer the morning of the art party (it wasn't until the afternoon) and let them defrost on the counter. The icing will start to sweat a little as they defrost, but once they reach room temperature, they will look normal again.
The cookies turned out amazing. The icing really helped to keep the cookies moist and soft. They were a huge hit!
FAQs For Paint Palette Cookies
I always make sure the cookies are totally cool and the icing is set before storing. I stack them between sheets of wax paper in an airtight container.
If I make them a few days ahead, I freeze them and take them out the morning of the party. The icing might look a little sweaty while they come to room temp, but they’ll dry out and look normal again.
Yes! I used a sugar cookie mix to make things super easy and just followed my favorite royal icing recipe (there’s a link in the blog post). You could grab ready-made sugar cookie dough and even try store-bought cookie icing to save time.
I found the simplest way was to use a decorating brush. After mixing up small bowls of colored royal icing, I just dipped my brush in and dotted the colors right onto the cookie. No fancy piping needed.
For more cookie recipes check out:
marg says
were can i purchase the artist palette cookie cutter thank you marg
Beth Gorden says
These are ADORABLE!!!