daisy and onesie cookies for a baby shower on parchment paper

How to Make Garden Themed Baby Shower Cookies [Tutorial]

Baby, Cake Decorating, Cookie Tutorials, Food / Tuesday, July 23rd, 2024

Hey everyone, today I want to teach you all how to make these adorable garden themed baby shower cookies for favours, a sweet table, prizes, or whatever you want. Tuck a couple of these into a gift bag with your gift and I’m pretty sure the recipient will enjoy them!

I chose to make my cookies for this tutorial as little daisies and onesies to fit the garden theme of the baby shower. Since the gender of the baby was unknown, we kept it neutral for colour and simple for design. You could also easily use this tutorial to make other shapes or colours of cookies, or even just duplicate the daisies here for a wedding, bridal shower, or another event instead!

How to make these baby shower cookies 

I made these sweet baby shower cookies with my sugar cookie recipe as a base and then a “Flooded” royal icing design on top. The method for making them is really quite simple: since royal icing is quite stiff when you make it, I used it to pipe the outline of my design. Next, I thinned the icing with water to make a puffy sort of glaze icing, which I then piped into the outlines that I created to keep it from spilling over the edges. Once that was dry, I added the final decorative piping finishing touches. After that, my cookies were ready to go!

What is royal icing?

Royal icing is basically a stiff meringue frosting which dries completely hard. It makes beautiful, durable decorations for fancy cakes and cookies. You can check out my recipe for royal icing here to learn more about it, where it comes from, and how it is most often used!

The best cookies to use as a base for this tutorial

As I mentioned above, these cookies are best made with a sugar cookie base. Sugar cookies do come in lots of different variations, however, so don’t be discouraged if you don’t like the plain ones that much! You can check out a couple of my favourite recipes below, or add some of your own favourite additions to spice them up.

Can these baby shower cookies be made with other types of frosting?

Yes! One of my favourite ways to decorate sugar cookies for events like this is with rolled fondant. You can check out this recipe for Valentine’s Day Sugar Cookies to see what I mean, and how that is done!

Using buttercream or other soft drying frostings will not work with the same method; although, you can use those to spread or pipe onto your cookies, and then use this design for inspiration on design.

Can this method be used for other designs?

For sure! As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, you can use this method of cookie decorating for just about any shape or design. Once you know how to make one type of cookies with this method, you can pretty much let your imagination run wild!

Little sprout onesies

The “Little Sprout” onesie design was, I thought, a super cute way of using the garden theme to compare the growth of a baby with the beginnings of a new plant. I love the parallels between the lives of people and the life of a garden, so this sweet little design was an easy choice. 

Daisy flower cookies

To add a little more colour and prettiness to the tables, I decided to make two designs instead of one: Daisies, I thought, were the perfect choice since this shower was gender neutral (with baby’s gender unknown at the time). Then of course, with all the ladies in attendance, I thought the feminine flower cookies would be enjoyed by their recipients.

How to package baby shower cookies for favours

Honestly the simplest way to package these cookies is in clear cellophane bags, with a white twist tie and a bit of satin ribbon or curling ribbon to finish them off. I have also sometimes packaged cookies in individual boxes, which you can do if you want to take your presentation up a notch. Here are a couple of ideas, if you want to see what that looks like:

Making sure the baby shower cookies turn out right

Read through the recipes and instructions

To make sure these cookies come out optimally, I would recommend reading through the recipes and the entire tutorial before you begin. Not only will this allow you to make sure you have what you need, it will also give you a very clear idea of what you have left to do and how long it will take you to do it. 

Plan your time appropriately

I know it probably looks intimidating, but the 2 day allotted time for making these is mostly drying time. So I say, plan for that! Make sure that you have enough counter space to store these cookies in a flat layer (I sometimes let them rest in a cold oven overnight to free up some extra space in the kitchen… just make sure that you leave yourself a reminder to LEAVE THE OVEN OFF if you do store them that way!).

Make the cookies ahead of time

One beautiful thing about these cookies is that they have a marvellous shelf life. I would be comfortable making these as early as a full week before my event!

    For this tutorial, you will need:

    garden themed baby shower royal icing decorated sugar cookies with piping bags
    Print

    Garden Themed Baby Shower Cookies

    These beautiful garden themed baby shower cookies are the perfect party favour to make your occasion special!

    Course Dessert
    Cuisine American, Canadian
    Keyword baby shower, sugar cookies
    Prep Time 2 days
    Servings 20 cookies
    Author Naomi

    Ingredients

    • 1 recipe prepared Classic Sugar Cookies cut with onesie and daisy cookie cutters (see notes for links)
    • x2 recipe Royal Icing (see notes for the recipe post link)
    • 1 (each) gel food colouring in yellow, green, and brown
    • 6 12" piping bags
    • 1-4 couplers
    • 1 #1 piping tip
    • 3 #2 piping tips
    • 1 #3 piping tip
    • 2 large cookie sheets to work on
    • 1 roll parchment paper to work on, optional
    • 1 clean rag
    • 1 package pins or toothpicks
    • 1 pair scissors

    Instructions

    Baking & Filling the Cookies:

    1. Bake the cookies according to the recipe instructions and cool completely. Set aside.

    2. Prepare the royal icing and cover tightly with a lid, sheet of plastic, or a damp cloth to keep it from drying out.

    3. Spoon a little bit of royal icing into a piping bag fitted with a coupler and a #3 round piping tip. Re-cover the rest of your icing to keep it from drying out, and pipe the outline of the flowers and onesies with stiff royal icing. Set aside.

    4. Thin about 200-205g (1/4 of the amount you made) with about 2-1/2 teaspoons water. To check to your consistency, scoop a bit of icing out of the bowl with a spoon, and then drop it back in. If the icing you dropped back in sinks in and blends smoothly with the rest of the icing in 10 seconds, it is perfect. If the icing is smooth in less than 10 seconds, it is too thin and will run over the edge of your cookies (in which case, you should add a little more stiff icing to thicken it back up). If it takes longer than 10 seconds (or never blends in completely at all), add water by the drop, mixing well and re-testing, until it dissolves in 10 seconds (icing that is too thick will not dry smoothly).

    5. Pour the thinned royal icing into a piping bag, and snip off the tip with scissors to make a small opening. Carefully allow the icing to flow into the outlines you created for your daisy and onesie cookies, starting on the edges and filling the cookies until the inside of the outlines are full. Use a toothpick or pin to spread the icing into any empty pockets around the outline. Allow the cookies to dry, undisturbed, for at least 12-24 hours.

    6. Re-beat the royal icing until it has a matte finish and forms stiff peaks with an electric or stand mixer, about 5-10 minutes.

    For the Daisies:

    1. Tint a little bit of the icing green, and spoon it into a piping bag fitted with a coupler and round piping tip #2. Squeeze a bit of icing out of the tip so that it hangs off the edge, and set it aside.

    2. Tint a little bit of the icing yellow, and spoon it into a piping bag fitted with a coupler and round piping tip #2. Squeeze a bit of icing out of the tip so that it hangs off the edge, and set it aside.

    3. Break off the green icing from the piping tip, and pipe a few green dots in a circle around the centre of each daisy. Set the green icing aside, again, allowing a little bit of icing to hang off the tip (this will prevent the icing from drying inside of the tip and preventing you from continuing).

    4. Break off the yellow icing from the tip, and fill the green dotted outline of each flower centre with little yellow dots.

    5. Set the daisies aside and allow them to dry completely, at least 2 hours. Package as desired.

    For the "Little Sprout" Onesies:

    1. Spoon a little bit of the re-beaten white icing into a piping bag fitted with a coupler and a #2 piping tip. Pipe the outline of the seams, neck and legs of the onesie cookies. Pipe the word "Little" across the tops, right under the neck of each cookie. Set aside.

    2. Using the green tinted icing from the daisies, pipe a little green plant sprout, with 1-2 leaves and a little stem. Set aside.

    3. Tint a little bit of the icing brown, and spoon it into a piping bag fitted with a coupler and a #1 piping tip (optional). Alternatively, you can just put some icing in a bag and snip off a tiny tip, as I did for this tutorial. Pipe a little mound shape as the dirt underneath the green plant sprouts on the onesies.

    4. Set the onesie cookies aside to dry completely, at least 2 hours. Package as desired.

    Recipe Notes

    Recipe and supply links:

     

    Piping the outlines (step 3 of Baking and Filling the Cookies)

    Filling the cookies (step 5 of Baking and Filling the Cookies)

    Finishing the details

    More cookie inspiration:

    There you have it! Simple, beautiful, and fun. As always, if you make these, leave me a comment or tag me in your photos on Instagram @naomicakesofficial. I always love to see your great work!

    Thanks for stopping in, and I’ll be back next week.

    –Naomi

    P.S. Love working with royal icing? Click Here or scroll down to grab my royal icing butterfly template for FREE!

    This post contains affiliate links.

    Leave a Reply

    Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

    Recipe Rating