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learn to ice
learn to ice

Learn To Ice | Day of the Dead Sugar Skull Cookies

10 October 2023

 | 

5 Mins

Planning any petrifying parties this Halloween? If you are, we have thrilling icing activity guaranteed to keep all your ghostly party goers eerily entertained! Today, we’re showing you how to ice some show stopping chocolate Sugar Skulls from our DIY Skulls Cookie Tin.

If you don’t have our DIY Skulls Cookie Tin (you really should, it’s great!) you can still follow along using our easy chocolate cookie recipe and flood and line icing tutorial.

If you do have a DIY Kit skip step 1 and head straight to step 2!

Step 1: Bake your Chocolate Skull Cookies

First start by baking your own chocolate cookie base using our easy chocolate cookie recipe, which includes a handy guide for rolling and cutting your dough. We use a special cutter for our Halloween skulls, but you can make one of your own by drawing a template and cutting around the dough. We do this occasionally with our bespoke orders!

Step 2: Preparing the icing

  • Once your chocolate skull cookies have come out of the oven and cooled down, the fun can really begin!
  • You will need to make a batch of white line icing to create the detail and white flood icing to create the main colours.
  • If you’re using our DIY Skulls Cookie Tin, take the icing sugar from inside the tin and pour into a bowl. Stir in a couple of spoonfuls of water and mix until the icing is thick, with the consistency of toothpaste. When you're happy with the consistency, take a couple of spoonfuls of the icing and put this into a separate bowl and put to one side.
  • Spoon the icing from your first bowl into a piping bag, you want the bag to be about two thirds full. You then need to take your bag, push the icing down to the closed end to get rid of the air pockets and tie a knot in the open end of it.
  • Trim a small amount off the tip of the bag ready for piping, and trim the seam edge, this makes icing easier. Put pressure on the end of the piping bag, so that a small amount of icing comes out of the tip, and then pinch the tip again, to create a clean tip.
  • Take the remaining icing (from the bowl you put to one side), and stir in a couple more spoonfuls of water. This will make the icing thinner, and will be used as flood icing. Once happy with the consistency, pour the icing into a piping bag. As before, get rid of the air pockets and tie a knot at the end of it.
  • If you’re not using our DIY Skulls Cookies Tin, you can find icing recipes and tips and tricks in our Royal Icing and Flood Blog.

    • Step 3: How to decorate Day of the Dead
    Sugar Skull Biscuits

    You can decorate your Sugar Skull Biscuits however you’d like, but here are three tutorials of how to ice some of our favourite designs. Follow along below or watch how we do it on our YouTube channel!

    Ice the outline of your cookie design

    Step 1: The outline line icing on your cookie create 'walls' so your flood icing won't escape. For each of our cookies we iced the same shape face, eyes, nose and mouth. Starting with the face shape, slowly outline the perimeter of the cookie with your line icing, at each point, simply touch the tip down before changing direction to create a smooth finish.

    Step 2: Next we ice a nose, eyes and a mouth. For the nose, we iced an upside down heart shape. For the mouth, we iced a straight line followed by four semi circles above and below.
    Top Tip

    Let your line icing dry for around 10 minutes at room temperature before flooding.

    Adding detail to your Sugar Skull Cookies

    Step 1: Taking your first cookie, use flood icing to fill the cookie inside the line icing. Don’t add too much flood icing, or it might leak over the edges of the line icing. Now take your sprinkles and sprinkle them generously over the flood icing at the top of the skull.
    Top Tip

    Dry your flood icing by putting it in the oven at ~50°C for 30 minutes

    Step 2: Once dry, use your line icing to fix more decorations to the sugar skull. Add a dot of line icing before placing a decoration on top. For our design we added silver decoration above and below the eyes of the skull using this technique.
    Step 3: Now take your second cookie, ice the facial features (feel free to get creative with the design!), fill with flood icing as before and dry in the oven again for around 30 mins at 50°C.

    Step 4: Once dry, take your line icing and create a thick outline around the eyes of the skull. Now place your cookie upside down in a plate of sprinkles, tapping it down a few times to ensure the sprinkles have stuck to the line icing. Next, use line icing to add dots around the cookie to which you can add other decorations.
    Top Tip

    Try not to do too many dots at once before adding the sprinkles or the sprinkles wont stick!

    Step 5: For your third cookie design, instead of icing the face shape as before, add some dots of line icing across the cookie. Place your cookie upside down in the sprinkles again, making sure the sprinkles stick to the icing.
    Step 6: Now take your line icing, and add some more details to your cookie, adding extra decorations wherever you fancy! We iced dots and flowers and added silver decoration here & there! Once you’ve added as much decoration as you’d like, just put your cookie to one side to dry for 15 minutes or so.
    And there you have it, three Day of the Dead Sugar Skull cookie creations! Don't feel like you need to stick to our designs... you can get creative with different colours, shapes and sizes using our easy techniques to create your own array of jaw dropping characters.
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