This Ruffled Heart Cookies decorating tutorial is by our contributor Amy of BZ Bees Sweet Treats…Love is in the air! Treat your Valentine to an extra sweet treat this year with these ombré ruffled heart cookies!
Ruffled Heart Cookies – What You’ll Need:
- round cookies baked according to your favorite sugar cookie recipe
- medium pink flood consistency icing
- piping consisteny icing in white, light pink, dark pink and red
- piping bag fitted with coupler and Wilton ruffle tip 101
- scriber needle or toothpicks
I wanted the ombré shades of pink to really blend for these cookies so I started by mixing my base color first and used the remaining icing to color the ruffle layers. To get the same effect, mix up a batch of your favorite royal icing and set aside about 1 cup while its still at freshly mixed piping consistency. Thin down the remaining icing to medium/flood consistency and color with your desired shade of pink. I used just a bit of Americolor Soft Pink gel color.
Outline and flood a base layer of medium pink on your cookies. Set aside and allow to dry 2-3 hours
While the base layer sets up, prepare the icing for your ombré ruffles. Add a few drops of Americolor White gel color to the reserved piping icing. This will give your ruffles a really bright and crisp white tone. Scoop a bit of this white icing into a tipless bag or icing pod made with plastic wrap (Callye of Sugarbelle has a great tutorial on creating icing pods).
Next, add some of the remaining base icing to the white and mix until you get a soft shade of pink. If the icing starts to thin, just add 1-2 tsp of powdered sugar until its back to a stiff consistency. Prep another bag/pod with this soft shade of pink. Repeat the process with the leftover piping and flood icing adding more pink for the third color, and finally a drop of red for the final shade. You should now have 4 bags/pods of piping consistency icing.
Drop the bag/pod with your darkest shade of piping icing into a second piping bag fitted with a coupler. If using tipless piping bags, simply snip a bit of the tip before putting into the second bag. If using a plastic wrap pod, pull one “tail” of the plastic wrap all the way through the coupler and trim the excess. Add a tip 101 to the coupler and attach the coupler ring.
I love using tipless bags and/or icing pods because the clean up is so much faster! No bags to wash out and only one tip to clean. Hooray!
While the base layer of icing continues to dry, practice the ruffle technique. You can pipe onto a sheet of wax paper or foil. I like to work with my Notta Cookie – a reusable plastic “cookie”.
It’s just about the thickness of my normal cookies so it’s a great tool to practice new techniques. It’s dishwasher safe, so you can just wipe the practice icing right off and re-use over and over!
The ruffle technique looks complex, but it’s actually pretty simple. Start with the wide end of the tip pointing down and just barely touching the cookie. Apply pressure and pipe in an upward curved motion then down again. Imagine piping little rainbows or lowercase letter n’s. Practice this a few times to get comfortable with the motion.
I wanted my hearts to all be the same size so I made a template using a post-it.
Gently place the template on top of your cookie and mark dots all around the edge of the shape. Remember your base icing isn’t completely dry so don’t poke too hard.
You can also allow the base layer of icing to dry overnight and use an edible ink food marker to sketch the outline onto the cookies.
Once your template is marked, begin piping the first layer of ruffles around the top of the heart, using the darkest color first.
Follow the curve of the heart all the way around.
Add a second layer of red ruffles directly below the first.
Pipe one color of ruffles onto all your cookies before switching to the next color. I flipped a few hearts over and piped the bottom point using red icing, just to have some variation on the final designs.
Using the next darkest shade, add two more layers of ruffles.
Repeat with the remaining two colors of ruffles – ending with your lightest shade.
When piping the final row of ruffles, I found it easiest to make three little arcs, with the center slightly longer to create the heart’s pointed bottom.
If Valentines’ Day isn’t your cup of tea, this technique can be used to create a variety of shapes and color schemes. Get creative and have fun! Have a sweet day!
We’d like to extend a big THANK YOU to Amy for sharing these pretty cookies with us. Be sure to follow her on Facebook & Instagram for adorable cookie decorating ideas. You can also order cookies from her! Check out the FAQ section of her website for more information.