How To Create Beautiful Wet on Wet Halloween Cookies!

Hey Bestie! After several months of bright summery designs, so many of us are ready for Halloween baking season! And I love how Halloween designs have evolved so much over the last few years. We’re seeing far more pink, other cute colors and many more cute designs for the season. I embraced this trend with these wet on wet Halloween cookies and I hope you love them too! Wet on wet (WOW) designs are a fabulous technique for cookiers of all skill levels but particularly gratifying for new decorators. So I’m dropping my tips for using this technique to manipulate your royal icing to create fun designs. I hope these inspire you, so let’s go!

A delicious cookie canvas

Before we can decorate, we have to bake, right? And while I’ll never deny the incredible flavor of THIS vanilla cookie recipe, Halloween is the perfect time to try something fun and different! During this season, the most popular flavors are chocolate, peanut butter, salted caramel and pumpkin spice. And honestly, red velvet is popular more so because of the color! The point is, you have SO many delicious options, and they are all no-chill, no-spread and always available for you HERE. Enjoy!

Soft bite royal icing

If you already have a royal icing recipe you love, I love that for you! But if you need a great one or if your current one is giving you any grief, I highly recommend giving THIS recipe a try. Simple to make with only a few steps and it consistently offers beautiful, puffy, silky icing that has a soft, delicious bite. And you’re always welcome to have fun with creating different flavors of your royal icing too! THIS will help break down those options and exactly how to create fun flavors. If I may, I highly suggest marshmallow flavored royal icing with your chocolate cookies this time of year.

Wet On Wet 101

Alright, we’ve got cookies and icing, let’s talk about WOW (wet on wet) royal icing technique! This technique refers to piping one color of royal icing onto another, while both are still wet, allowing the icings to blend smoothly together. It’s very common when you want a design in your icing that is all within the same layer. You’ll commonly see polka dots, hearts, stripes and dragging techniques used with this technique. It’s very visually appealing and gratifying to see a design come to life by using a scribe to create a design with your icing. Here is an example from some beginner Valentine’s Day designs.

But this technique can be creatively used for so much more than just these few commonly used designs! So today, I’m featuring some fun wet on wet Halloween cookies that will hopefully spark some inspiration.

wet on wet technique – tips for success

Here are several tips and tricks that will help you create beautiful designs using the WOW technique.

consistency

When using the wet on wet technique, you want your different colors to all be the same consistency, a flood consistency. If one is thicker or thinner than the other, the colors won’t blend as seamlessly. I use a 15-second flood icing, which is still what I use for my wet on wet designs. If you need guidance on creating that flood consistency, my royal icing consistency guide will help. Or THIS reel demonstrates how to create this consistency as well.

If your icing is too thick, the icing won’t be perfectly smooth and your design can kind of sit on top of the icing. And if your icing is too thin, the design will spread and you’ll lose the look you want. So really try to create a sold flood consistency for the WOW technique.

Designs & timing

When using the wet on wet technique, you have to work pretty quickly, as soon as you flood your cookie. If your icing is allowed to start crusting, you won’t be able to successfully achieve the smooth design you want. So before flooding, have a plan. Have your colors ready, scribe nearby and know exactly how you plan to add your colors and then create your design before your icing starts to crust.

Have your bestie nearby

In this case, your bestie is your scribe, or even a toothpick if you’re new to decorating. When using the WOW technique, your scribe is an essential tool that will help you manipulate the icing to create the design or look you want.

avoid over-flooding

Normally when we’re flooding our cookies, we like a nice, puffy, uniform layer of icing. But when using the wet on wet technique, you need to account for the fact that you’ll be adding even more icing onto your flood. So be conscious of that when flooding, especially if you’ll be adding a lot of another color. Too much icing overall will lead to your icing running over. Still aim for a uniform layer, but not as much as you may normally use to flood, to accommodate more icing of another color.

wipe your scribe in between strokes

With the vast majority of WOW designs, you’ll want to wipe off your scribe in between each stroke. This is what will give clean definition in your design and colors. It can feel tedious for some designs, because you’ll do a lot of wiping, but just have a cloth of paper towel in your other hand so you can quickly just wipe your scribe.

wet on wet Halloween Cookie tutorial – video!

Let’s see all this in action, right?! Click the image below to watch the video of 5 different Halloween designs that include the wet on wet technique!

Are you ready to make your own?!

I hope this post all about wet on wet Halloween cookies has inspired you to make your own! There are so many fabulous designs you can create using wet on wet! But if you need any more help, you can find me and thousands of fellow Besties HERE. It’s the happiest corner of the internet where you’ll find endless help, support, inspiration and celebration of beautiful bakes.

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