I Heart Mom Tattoo Cookies

I’ve been doing two things in my free time as of late: catching up on this season of Ink Master and designing Mother’s Day cookies. Do you see where this is going? My Pappo and I have always found tattoos fascinating and I’m constantly amazed by the things tattoo artists can do. I’ll admit, I have a few tattoos of my own (and my Pappo has quite a few more than me), but my Mum is pretty old fashioned when it comes to this sort of thing. So I was sitting there, one night, watching Ink Master and I thought sarcastically to myself “Oh, I could get Mum a ‘I heart Mum’ tattoo for Mother’s Day. She’d looooove that!” And then the idea hit me: Mom tattoo cookies! They’re the perfect (pain free) way to say “I heart you Mom!” this Mother’s Day!

I Heart Mom Tattoo Cookies

What You’ll Need:

Cookies
A batch of royal icing
Food gel coloring in red, black, yellow, orange, green, and blue
Piping bags (and tips if you use them)
Toothpicks/skewers
Black food marker

You’ll want to start by making all of your cookies (I made chocolate cookies for this set). I made two designs using a large heart cutter and another design that I frankenstein’d together with three cutters. To make that last one, you’ll need a small heart cutter, a small flower cutter, and a small rectangular cutter. Have a look at the picture below to see where I placed the cutters. Don’t worry about cutting the inside of the cookie; that’ll be covered with icing and you can just press it back together prior to baking.

Once your cookies are baked and cooled, you can start decorating them! I’m not great at free-handing my icing, so I used a black edible marker to outline my design on each cookie. After you’ve outlined your design (if you’re going to), you can pipe the outline with black piping icing. You’ll want a little bit wider outline for this (#1.5- #2 tip) as the flood icing will cover some of it on either side.

Once you have your outline done, you can start filling in with your flood icings (I don’t wait for the outline to dry, and so far I’ve never had any issues with color bleeding). You can really do that however you like and however is most comfortable for you, but if you’re looking for a method, I usually like to work top to bottom so I don’t get my hand in wet icing as I’m working. As you’re filling in your designs, you can use a toothpick or wooden skewer to work you icing into place.

Once your cookies are completely dry (I like to wait overnight for this step), you can start adding your details and lettering with a black edible food marker. If you don’t have a black food marker, you can also use a small brush and some black gel food coloring to paint your details on.

Let your cookies dry completely before packaging.

Happy baking!