Cherry Blossom Butterfly Cookies with Royal Icing

Decorated floral butterfly cookies with royal icing are a dreamy addition to any spring, birthday, and wedding cookie platter. In this tutorial, I’ll show how to include a flower element with a simple butterfly design that’s arresting, cheerful, elegant, and one-of-a-kind, just like a butterfly feeding on the nectar out in a meadow of flowers.

A close up of a decorated sugar cookies embellished with piped flowers.

DECORATED FLORAL BUTTERFLY COOKIES STEP-BY-STEP

Cookie Decorating Guide
Beginner’s Guide To Cookie Decorating
Ultimate Guide to Cut-Out Cookies (tips, tricks, troubleshooting)
Royal Icing Recipe
Small Batch Royal Icing Recipe
Cookie Icing Recipes (includes vegan royal icing, glaze, fondant)
Guide To Royal Icing Consistencies with Visual Help(what is stiff, flood icing, etc.)
How To Freeze Royal Icing
How To Make Royal Icing Transfers
Royal Icing FAQ ( for example: how to make black icing, color bleeding, storage, and more)
How To Make a Cookie Cutter Template
Ultimate Guide To Cookie Decorating Tools

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THINGS YOU NEED

Butterfly Cookie Cutter
Gel Food Coloring: black, green, yellow, pink
Royal Icing Flowers (cherry blossom, roses, daisies, daffodils)
Edible Markers
Tipless Piping Bags
Scribe Tool

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Decorated cookies displayed on a blooming tree.

BAKE COOKIES

Prepare the cookies using your favorite cut-out cookie recipes or one of these tested recipes. To cut out cookies, use a butterfly cookie cutter or make your own cookie cutter template.

Unbaked butterfly cookies on a brown parchment along with a cookie cutter template and a pen blade knife.

ROYAL ICING COLORS AND CONSISTENCIES

Black Icing: 15-second consistency (wings), soft piping consistency (body)
White Icing: 15-second consistency
Brown Icing: piping consistency (branches)
Green Icing: piping consistency (leaves)

DESIGN PLAN

Draw the piping guide using an edible marker. Divide the cookie into sections and leave a small gap between the wings.

Fingers holding an edible marker, drawing a guide onto a cookie.

HOW TO PIPE A SIMPLE WING BUTTERFLY PATTERN

I used the wet-on-wet royal icing decorating technique to create a simple wing butterfly pattern.

Start by making a thick border with black icing (15-second consistency), fill this area with black icing (steps 1-3), and immediately fill the inner area with white icing (steps 4-6). Then, use a scribe to shape the icing while wet (steps 7-8). Follow with the next step immediately.

Piping a black outline and filling the middle with white icing.

Here comes the fun part of shaping the icing into the characteristic butterfly design. Use the tip of a scribe tool or a toothpick. Pull the black icing slowly into the white, wiping the tip of the scribe after each time you run the tip of the scribe through the icing (steps 1-6). Pipe dot and oval shapes into the black icing (steps 7-8).

A detail showing a scribe tool being pulled from black icing into white creating streaks of black in white icing.

We’re going to repeat the same thing on the left wing.

Piping black and white icing onto a part of a cookie.

Try to mirror the right-wing pattern on the left wing. After this step, let the icing crust for 30 minutes before moving on to the next set of bottom wings. Letting the area crust will help define the wings’ top and bottom sets.

Scribe tool dragging the black icing into white.

BOTTOM BUTTERFLY WINGS

Outline the bottom wing and create a thick border filled with black icing (15-second consistency). Immediately fill the inner area with white icing (15-second consistency), and use a scribe tool to shape the icing while wet (steps 1-8).

Decorating bottom of the cookie with white and black icing.

Here is a close-up of shaping icing with a scribe tool. In the picture below, I slowly pull the black icing into the white, making it flush with the white area (steps 1-2).

A close up showing a scribe tool shaping the icing while wet.

Repeat the wet-on-wet pulling technique to create the butterfly wing pattern (steps 1-5). Try to mirror the pattern, along with the dots and oval shapes you pipe into the black icing (steps 6-8).

BUTTERFLY BODY

Use soft piping consistency icing to pipe the butterfly body. I decided to pipe graduated dots. Starting from the head and decreasing the size of the dot towards the bottom of the body (steps 1-6).

FLORAL BUTTERFLY COOKIE DESIGN

Depending on the flowers you choose to embellish your butterfly cookie, you can pipe a brown branch or a green stem. I recently made pretty royal icing cherry blossoms and decided to use them in this cookie decorating project.

Pipe brown branches using piping consistency icing (steps 1-8).

PIPE ROYAL ICING LEAVES

You can pipe the leaves using a small leaf piping tip or easily make a leaf tip by cutting a V-shaped opening on your decorating bag.

Pipe small green leaves onto the brown branches. Use green icing of piping consistency to pipe the leaves (steps 1-3).

A details showing piped leaves onto a brown branches.

EMBELLISH WITH ROYAL ICING FLOWERS

Here are the cherry blossom flowers I made! Aren’t they gorgeous! You can make your cherry blossoms, too.

To attach pre-made royal icing flowers onto the branches, use a small amount of royal icing as glue (steps 1-3).

Hand holding a piped royal icing flower, attaching it onto a cookie.

VIDEO TUTORIAL

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COOKIE DISPLAY IDEA

I had the idea of displaying these floral butterfly cookies around piped branches with icing. If you were to make a cake and use cookies to decorate it like this, I think it would look amazing!