Learn how to make some adorable sloth decorated sugar cookies with this royal icing cookie decorating tutorial!!
When I made my very first decorated cookie - I lived alone in Colorado. My husband was deployed. I had one child. And one friend. And cookies were sugar.... so really - I had TWO friends.
When I moved to South Korea and had to give up making cakes entirely and started making cookies for REAL and not just for kidding any more... I was still just a girl and her sugar. I had a Ziploc bag full of cookie cutters. And a baking sheet that could fit six cut-outs at a time.
At that time, this new wave of cookie decorating was really just beginning. And by "new wave," I mean -- cookies that were CRAZY adorable and still delicious at the same time. For decades, cookie decorating had either been one or the other. The cookies looked good OR they tasted good. And suddenly - you could have both.
As it turns out...people kind of liked that whole thing. Since the first moment that the second child was born on earth, there has been a desire to stand out, to be unique.** And "custom" allows people to do that. And I don't think it will surprise anyone that the rise in popularity of custom decorated sugar cookies coincided with the introduction of Pinterest.
MY POINT IS -- (You guys are SO DISTRACTING.) -- I lived in South Korea with a single box full of decorating supplies. And I had at least five friends. And they were all online cookie decorating friends that would chat with me at 3 am when I was up with my very newborn babies. You guys -- I was pretty sure that I was LIVING THE DREAM.
I could never never NEVER have imagined that it would just keep getting better. (To be perfectly honest... I never thought *I* would get better. 🤣🤣🤣🤣)
Flash forward a decade - I own A LOT more than 20 cutters. I have actual friends that decorate cookies - AND I've met them in real life and they are in fact, NOT creepy 50 year old men trying to swindle me out of my life savings. I finally branched out past chocolate sugar cookies. I experimented with a million ways to do things differently with some successes (hello dehydrators!) and some colossal failures (salt in royal icing - NOT recommended.) My friends innovated this world. They started businesses and changed the way cookies get decorated. I mean... can you even imagine what it was like decorating cookies before there were stencils and scribe tools?
After all this time... it is still the relationships that I have with all of you -- from my original crew to those I haven't yet become the best of friends with (but we WILL make that happen, won't we?!!) -- that I value most.
And that's why I fall in love with cookies like these. (You thought I loved these cookies because sloths are adorable, didn't you? I actually think sloths are weird. And adorable. Which makes it even weirder. I can't trust my brain when I'm around sloths.)
The truth is, one of my friends -- Denise from Ann Clark Cookie Cutters -- designed this cutter. And we got to work together. Again. And I love that we are friends and that we get to work together. And I may have gotten this cutter before anyone else had even seen it, and I'm not going to lie... I kind of liked that too. 🤣🤣 Want to hang out with us and make sloth cookies together?
**May or may not be true.
How to make sloth decorated sugar cookies:
Step 1.
Use a medium consistency brown icing and a #3 tip to outline the head area of the sloth. Use the same icing to pipe a base layer where the eyes will go. Use a light brown icing to fill in the rest of the head. Pipe three tufts of hair at the top of the head with the light brown icing. While the icing is still wet, add the dark area near the eyes with a medium consistency dark brown icing and a #1.5 tip. Let dry for at least 15 minutes.Step 2.
Use the brown icing to outline the rest of the cookie. Be sure to bring the outline for the legs down into the body to give them definition. Let dry for another 15 minutes.Step 3.
Fill in the rest of the cookie with brown icing. While the icing is still wet, use the light brown icing to add the sunshine detail on the back of the sloth.Step 4.
Pipe a dot of white icing immediately followed by a smaller dot of black icing for each eye. Add a nose with the brown icing and a #1.5 tip.Step 5.
Use a black food color marker to give him an adorable little smile. Add rosy cheeks with a pink food color marker. Add squiggly fur details with the brown icing and a #1.5 tip.
NEED MORE??
OR ---
Grab everything you need to make these cookies in a single kit HERE!!! The kit includes a cookie mix, an icing mix, tools, supplies and instructions!!
