Hey Besties! Valentine’s Day is quickly approaching and I’m so excited to share one of the simplest, yet fun designs anyone can make! These beginner box of chocolate cookies are perfect! They look beautiful and give beginners a great opportunity to practice fundamental flooding and piping skills! Once you’re mastered these skills, your design options are limitless! So today we’ll walk through the tutorials that will help anyone improve their flooding and piping. But don’t let this simple design fool you, these are perfect for decorators of any level. Around here, we believe you don’t need years of decorating experience to make stunning cookies. Let’s do this!
Recipes
Starting at the top, we need to select a delicious canvas! Now the natural choice likely would be our chocolate cutout cookie recipe. But I’m still obsessed (as are many other cookiers) with our salted caramel cutout cookies, so that’s what we went with today. But bestie, you’ve got so many options to choose from! Stick with a recipe you already love, use our vanilla recipe or choose a delicious one from THIS collection. All of our recipes are no-chill, no spread and incredibly delish. They are simple and quick to whip up so you can be decorating in no time.
On to the royal icing! If you already have a royal icing recipe you LOVE and you get beautiful results with, I love that for you! But if you’re looking for a fabulous recipe or if your current royal icing is giving you any issues (craters, bleeding, etc), please try THIS recipe. It’s incredibly simple to make and gives us perfect results every time. We never have color bleed, cratering or other issues that commonly plague cookiers. The magic is in the method of how you make your icing to give it the structure it needs! Follow the instructions and you’ll be amazed with this royal icing.
And when it comes to royal icing flavor, you literally have endless options. The two main drivers for how your royal icing will taste, are the meringue powder you use and the flavorings you add. We only use Genie’s Dream meringue powder because it not only smells and tastes heavenly, but gives our icing the best results in color, shine and more. When it comes to flavoring, we almost always use clear vanilla, but you can use different flavor extracts, emulsions and flavorings to create any flavor you like! If using emulsions and flavorings is new to you, THIS breaks it all down for you. Have fun with the world of flavors available to you!
Beginner Box of Chocolate Cookies!
Let’s get to the fun part! These box of chocolate cookies are so simple and only require basic shape cookies, flooding and piping. You can get as creative as you want because once you put them all together, they look stunning! Who could resist these cookies?!
I love using a variety of basic shapes for this cookie set to make a full dozen to arrange together. Squares, rectangles, hearts, circles, ovals and any other cute shape you have! Or you could stick with one shape too, it’s all about the look you want.
For coloring, I use ChefMaster colors to make all the shades I need. THIS is the set we order on repeat for all of our decorating. Paired with using Genie’s Dream meringue powder, we get vivid, bold colors without having to wait for colors to develop, at a great price point.
Flooding
Once you have your cookies baked and colors made, it’s time to flood! Now bestie, you’ve got a couple options! You can flood the more traditional way, using a decorating bag, or you can dip! There is no right or wrong way, it’s totally personal preference. If you want to outline and flood with a decorating bag, this Flooding 101 tutorial is for you. It’s going to walk you through exactly how (and how not to) master flooding cookies. And if you want to use the dipping method, I’ve got you. Our dipping tutorial is going to help you nail it!
I always like to give you options and every cookier finds what works best for them. Personally, I think it’s valuable to be fluent in both flooding methods because each has benefits in certain situations.
Piping
Now here’s where you can get really creative! And this is such a fabulous cookie set to practice piping! If you don’t already know, you’ll need to use royal icing that is thicker, for your piping details. If you used your same flood consistency, you won’t get the pretty definition in your lines. THIS tutorial, which includes video, will help you nail your piping consistency and give you the tips you need to create beautiful lines.
And again, with this design, there is no right or wrong, let your creative freedom run wild! You may even want to use some of our royal icing transfer sheets to create transfers you can add to these cookies. I did that on a few of these and it gives great dimension to the set. You’ll find all of those free royal icing transfer sheets, along with guidance, HERE! They are another fabulous resource for decorators of all levels, but especially beginners!
Once you’ve flooded and piped your designs, you’re ready to let them completely dry and then package! We always let our cookies dry completely overnight before packaging. We do use a dehydrator during the decorating process and while our icing is still wet, to avoid any cratering, get a great sheen and speed up the process. If using a dehydrator for cookie decorating is new to you, THIS article explains it all.
Your Beautiful Box of Chocolates Cookies!
This design really shines once you put them all together. Personally, I think packaging them in a way where they can all be seen, is the best touch. I used our favorite 12 x 12″ boxes in these photos, and if they were actually for an order, I’d heat seal each and add paper shred underneath.
Was this beginner box of chocolate cookies set and guidance helpful? I often see beginner cookiers trying complicated designs, or feeling like they need complicated designs, but I believe mastering the fundamentals will get you much further. You should absolutely challenge yourself to keep developing your skills, but don’t feel like you must do intricate designs. Creating simple designs that look amazing goes further than trying complex designs that you’re not ready for. There’s plenty of time for complex and intricate designs once you’re there!
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