I love using cookies to decorate cakes so when I was asked to make a unicorn themed cake for a friend, I knew that was what I’d do. The only problem I had was that I didn’t want the back side of the cookies exposed. I decided to give decorating both sides a try, and the result was beautiful!
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Cookie Unicorn Cake Toppers
I am a mom of 3 boys so when my friend asked me for help with her daughter’s birthday cake… I was excited! Yay, girl stuff! She wanted the theme to be unicorns so I set out to come up with a design. Even though I have all boys, Pinterest keeps me in-the-know about how big unicorns are these days.
There are so many beautiful or cute designs out there I kind of got overwhelmed looking for inspiration. That’s when I decided to just go with what I would like if the cake were for me.
When I think unicorns, I think rainbows. So this was the theme of the cake. Since rainbows are bright and colorful, I wanted the unicorns themselves to be monochromatic.
Double-Sided Cookies
I have been decorating cookies for almost 12 years now, but I have never decorated both sides of a cookie. This project seemed like the perfect time to give it a try. When I place the cookies on the cake, I don’t want you to see the plain back of the cookies.
Decorating the cookies on both sides turned out beautiful for the top of the cake, but this was not a quick process. To ensure the work I did on the first side stayed intact I allowed a very long dry time for the first side’s icing. Make sure you set aside a few days to complete this project.
Check out my video of the process and then I will go over a few important tips.
Important Information
I used my perfect sugar cookie recipe for these unicorns and was so happy with how well they held their shape and how sturdy they turned out to be. You can find the recipe here.
The dough was rolled to 1/4″ thickness using my Joseph Joseph rolling pin and I used a unicorn cookie cutter I picked up a while ago at a craft store, but here is one just like mine.
Immediately after pulling the baked cookies out of the oven, I inserted sticks into the hot cookies. Be careful not to burn yourself, but this is my favorite method for making cookies on sticks! As the cookies cool, the cool onto the sticks and they are nice and stable.
Decorating the Cookies
The most difficult part of making these cookies was that I could rarely lay them down flat. You need to always be conscious of what could be damaged on the underside of the cookie.
Horns
To make the unicorn horns, I colored fondant the same color my icing would be. I used Americolor gold. I rolled out my fondant and just used the cookie cutter to cut out the horn.
Attaching the horn on the first side was easy, just a small amount of royal icing and stick it on. When it comes time to attach the horn on the other side, don’t lay the cookie down flat… you’ll smoosh the horn on the opposite side. I used my cookie scribe/fondant knife to make indents for the lines on the horn.
To speed up the drying time of the fondant, you can place the cookies in a warm oven (I like mine to be between 100-120 degrees) for about 10 minutes. Since you can’t lay the cookies flat, I found crumpling up aluminum foil and placing the cookie on top of that worked great! Just make sure the horn isn’t sitting on the foil. I used the same crumpled foil to lay the cookies on for the icing to dry.
Icing
I used my favorite royal icing recipe found here and colored it with Americolor gold. I thinned it to a consistency somewhere between piping and flood and placed it into a tipless bag. I used the same icing to outline and flood.
To ice the cookies, lay the cookies on a turntable or container turned upside down and let the horn overhang. This is to be on the safe side so the horn doesn’t get smashed. You can see what I mean in my video.
Allow the icing to dry for a day before flipping the cookie over and repeating the process.
Airbrushing
When the icing has dried completely on both sides, airbrush the cookie gold. I used Amerimist gold sheen. Be sure to get every surface… front, back, sides, everything!
Place the cookies standing up by their sticks in floral foam to dry the airbrushing for a bit (10-15 mins) and then spray the cookies again. This time use brown coloring. I used Amerimist warm brown. Allow the sprayed color to dry with the cookies standing in the foam again.
Finally, spray the cookies with another coat of gold sheen. You can repeat this step as many times as you’d like until you achieve a gold that you are happy with.
Decorate Your Cake
Now that your cookies are complete, you can place them on your cake. They are a beautiful and tasty addition.
Happy Decorating! xoxo, Katie
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