Hey Besties! Spring is here and that means endless options for floral cookies! Now hear me out…I know many cookiers have a fear of florals. However, today we’re focusing on drop flowers with royal icing that anyone can learn! And honestly, florals are SO much easier and more forgiving than people think. Once you learn, they are actually super-fast and fun to make! And there are literally endless options using only a handful of different decorating tips. I’ll show you 6 different flowers in today’s tutorial, and you’ll be well on your way! Let’s go!
Cookie & Icing Recipes
If you need a delicious cookie canvas, you’ll find my favorite vanilla cutout cookie recipe HERE. With no chilling needed, they are super quick and simple to make! Or if you want to enjoy a different fun flavor, you’ll find MANY options HERE! Knock yourself out!
Now let’s talk royal icing! If you have a recipe you love, I love that for you! Or if you need a fabulous royal icing recipe, THIS walks you through exactly how I make my icing for all of my decorated cookies. Simple and quick to make with just a few steps! Many cookiers who create a lot of florals love this recipe as it’s easy to pipe at even the stiffest consistencies. No hand cramps here!
Royal icing Consistency for florals
Regardless of which recipe you’re using, when making flowers with royal icing, you’ll want a STIFF consistency. This will give you the best shape and definition in petals or details. There’s nothing worse than creating stunning flowers that just pool together and lose their shape. So if you notice your shape isn’t holding just like you created it, add a little more powdered sugar to your icing for a stiffer consistency.
When I make my icing on a daily basis, I never need a whole batch at a floral STIFF consistency. So I simply make icing, separate out and color the icing I want for my florals and add more powdered sugar to create the STIFF consistency I need. You can see that in this quick video! Note how the peaks don’t move…that’s what you want when creating flowers with royal icing, so your petals and shapes are defined.
Tips for Making drop flowers with royal icing
I have shared several floral tutorials previously which you can find HERE, but today, we’re focusing on simple, yet beautiful drop flowers! No flower nails needed, and these can be piped directly onto your cookies or made ahead of time as transfers and added to your cookies later!
Many of the same piping tips can be used for drop flowers as other flowers, it all just comes down to the technique. For the flowers featured in today’s tutorial, I used Wilton tips 107, 224, 129, 1M, 109, 121 and 132. These are all very common, versatile piping tips and can be used for MANY different designs.
So the tip numbers I reference here and in the video are Wilton tip numbers and I have used THIS piping tip set for YEARS. There are many other piping tip sets that are far cheaper, like THIS one. Just know they are numbered differently, so you’ll need to determine the equivalent tips to Wilton’s. And the cheaper sets are well…cheaper quality. But sometimes a cheaper tip set is an okay place to start!
Royal Icing Drop Flower Video
Alright, we’ve got cookies, icing, and tips! Let’s decorate! In THIS short video, you’ll see 6 different styles of drop flowers or can click on the drop flower image below to access the video. I hope this is helpful and inspires you to create some of your own drop flowers with royal icing!
Best way to practice?
Bestie, make one bag of stiff icing and spend an hour just practicing drop flower designs to learn the movements and techniques. Trying them for the first time on a set of cookies that are needed, is not setting you up for success! Practice when there is no pressure or stress, when you can simply play with your icing and learn. This is where your skills and confidence will grow!
And if you need any more help, guidance, or want to share your flowers, join thousands of fellow Besties HERE in our community! That’s literally what we’re there for…the happiest corner of the internet.
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