St. Patrick's Day Cookies
These St. Patrick’s Day Cookies are the perfect excuse to get playful with decorating. Shamrock-shaped sugar cookies turn into tiny edible canvases, finished with royal icing in a variety of easy, festive designs. Keep it simple with a single color, add some sprinkles, or try a slightly more detailed piped pattern without making it complicated. Whether you prefer clean, classic greens or more intricate decorative touches, this recipe is all about fun ways to dress up shamrock cookies for a sweet St. Patrick’s Day celebration. And if you don’t have cookie cutters, I show a method that uses circular cookies too.
Equipment
- Measuring Spoons
- Measuring Cups
- Stand Mixer with mixing bowls or hand mixer with a large mixing bowl
- Cooling Rack
- Plastic Wrap
- Rolling Pin
- Parchment Paper
- Baking Sheet
- Shamrock-shaped Cookie Cutters
- Piping Bags (optional)
- Scribe tool (optional) - can use a toothpick
Ingredients
- 1 Batch Shamrock-shaped Sugar Cookies
- 2 cups Confectioner's Sugar (226g)
- 1 ½ Tbsp Meringue Powder (15g)
- 3 ½ Tbsp Water
- ½ Tsp Vanilla Extract
- Gel Food Coloring green (or blue and yellow) and black
- Assorted Sprinkles optional
Instructions
Prepare Your Royal Icing
- Make a batch of royal icing, you can either follow my recipe or your own. Thin down the consistency by adding a little bit of water at a time until you get a 10 second consistency. This is where you can drizzle the the icing back into the bowl and it will sit on the surface for about 10 seconds before it melts back in to the rest of the icing.
- Divide the icing in to three bowls. Keep one bowl white, add green food coloring to the second bowl and stir in. Add green food coloring to the third bowl and stir it in, then add in black food coloring until you get the shade of green you want.
- Place colored royal icing into individual piping bags and snip off the ends. Just snip a small bit of the tip off. You can always cut off more if necessary.
One Solid Flooded Color
- The easiest cookie in this series will be just a solid color of royal icing piped and flooded on to the cookie.Pipe a line all around the edge of the cookie following the cookie shape.
- Fill inside this piped shape with more icing. This is called "flooding".
- Use a scribe tool or a toothpick to squiggle the icing around, filling in any gaps and smoothing it all out. Once done, give the bottom of the cookie a gentle tap on the surface of the counter, this helps to smooth out the top too.
- You can add sprinkles while the icing is still wet. If using sanding sugar see my notes about when to add.
- Set aside for 2 hours to allow the icing to harden up.
Polka Dot Shamrock
- Follow the steps above to pipe and flood the cookie.
- Pipe small dots of another color on top of the wet icing. The dots will sink into the wet icing, forming a dot on the same level as the original icing.
- Set aside to dry for two hours.
Swirly Outline A
- After flooded icing has dried for 2 hours you can now pipe lines on the surface.Pipe around the edge of the cookie in a different color. I did a little swirl in the middle of each shamrock leaf. Then starting again right next to where I made the swirl and continuing on, until the outline was complete. You could always add more swirls into the middle of the cookie if you want.
Swirly Outline B
- Wait for the flooding icing to dry, about two hours.Start on one of the side leaves, and began piping. Do a little loop at the middle of the leaf then continue on. At the far edge of the leaf make a straight line towards the opposite edge of the leaf on the other side of the cookie. Go through the middle of the cookie on your way.Once at the opposite leaf, pipe the outline making a loop in the middle of the leaf then continuing on. Once the leaf is complete, make a straight line back towards the first leaf that was piped, going through the middle of the cookie and connecting to where you first started piping. (See pictures and more details in the post)
- Now doing the vertical section of the shamrock, start on one side of the vertical leaf and begin piping around the edge of the leaf, making a loop in the middle then continuing on to the rest of the leaf. Once the vertical leaf is completed make a straight line down towards the opposite side of the stem, going through the middle of the cookie. Pipe around the stem, then come back straight through the middle of the cookie and connect your piping line to where you started.
Circular Cookies
- Make a festive cookie by making a shamrock shape in the middle of the cookie. Pipe and flood your cookie with a base color. I used white.
- Add three good-sized green circles in a rough triangular pattern (think of these as the three leaves of the shamrock). Try to keep the circles close to each other, and touching is good.
- Use a scribe to make the shamrock leaf shape. Start with the scribe just outside the edge of one of the circles. Drag the scribe through the background color and into the green circle. This should pull the green edge into the circle giving it that classic clover-like shape. Do this to the other two circles, dragging from the outside edge towards the middle of the shamrock. See post for pictures and more details)
- Pipe on a green stem.
- Pipe green dots around the edge of the cookie as well if you want.
Notes
- If you are using sanding sugar as a sprinkle, it is best not to sprinkle it on right away, or the sugar dissolves a bit in the wet icing and the dye bleeds a little. I find waiting about 10-15 minutes lets the surface dry a little but it's still wet enough for the sugar to adhere to.
- I use a scribe to do this decorative work, but a toothpick can also be used.
- It's good practice to clean your scribe every time it comes out of the icing.