How to Make Cute Valentine’s Day Panda Bear Cookies

What do you think of when you think of Valentine’s Day? Do you think of cards, candy, flowers, and cookies or do you think of a great big bear hug? Personally, in my world, bear hugs and cookies go hand in hand and what better time to share than on Valentine’s day. Come on, who doesn’t love a big bear hug especially when you give them Valentine’s Day panda bear cookies?

The great thing about these panda bear cookies is you probably already have the cookie cutter you need to make them. Can you tell what cutter was used to make the cute little guys? If you said an egg cookie cutter, you’d be correct. Another great thing about it is you only need two colors of royal icing. Does it get any easier than that? Well, you may need to add a heart cookie, but chances are you probably already have a heart cookie cutter so could it be any easier to decorate Valentine’s Day cookies?

bear cookies, Valentine cookies, Valentine's Day cookies, cookie decorating, royal icing

Supply List for Valentine’s Day Panda Bear Cookies:
(may contain affiliate links)

Cookie Cutter:
Egg Cookie Cutter- Use any size egg cookie cutters you’d like for this panda bear project. Making two different sizes with a heart seems to work well for a Valentine’s Day gift and to let everyone know these bears are a cute little bear couple.

Recipes:

Royal Icing:

Tools:

Tipless Decorating Bags:
These are the tipless decorating bags I use. I like them all so I thought I’d share the links with you so you can try then if you’d like.

Optional tools:
Fan to dry your cookies so they’ll dry with a nice shine.
Cookie Turntable and Mat

How to Make Cute Valentine’s Day Panda Bear Cookies Video:

See! I told you these cookies are simple to make and don’t you think your valentine will love them! Maybe we should all make some and try to get a few extra bear hugs from the kids and grandkids on February 14th. I think it’ll work!

Let’s Decorate!

 

bear cookies, Valentine cookies, Valentine's Day cookies, cookie decorating, royal icing

  • Begin by drawing the pattern on the cookie with a food-safe marker.
  • Next, outline the ears and the center of the panda bear with the outline consistency of royal icing.
  • Once I outlined the ears I flooded them with the black outline royal icing. Usually, I fill the areas with flood icing, but my icing has been acting a bit weird.

bear cookies, Valentine cookies, Valentine's Day cookies, cookie decorating, royal icing

For some reason, the last few batches of my royal icing has been forming craters on my flooded cookies. Craters are sinkholes that form in your icing as it dries. They’re no fun because we work so hard to make our cookie surface nice and smooth and then a crater decides to form and ruin the beautiful look we had achieved with our icing. UGH! It’s so frustrating and we’ll talk about it more this year, but for now, we’ll talk about a simple trick that is helping me tremendously!

They say the craters happen because of how long it takes your royal icing to dry. If it takes a long time, your royal icing will slowly sink and you’re left with an uneven surface on your sugar cookies. So how can you speed things up? As soon as you flood an area of your cookies with royal icing, place it in front of a fan or in a dehydrator. The air blowing will help speed up the drying and help your royal icing form a crust that’ll help prevent craters. The fan will also help your icing have a nice shine as the icing dries. If you don’t use a fan, your cookies will dry with a matte finish and could form craters.

The funny thing about craters is that I’ve been placing my cookies in front of a fan once I add the flood icing, but for some odd reason, I’m still getting these miserable sinkholes that are very unattractive. So what’s a girl to do? Well, let’s talk about that for a second because there’s an easy solution I found at Corianne’s Custom Cookies.

bear cookies, Valentine cookies, Valentine's Day cookies, cookie decorating, royal icing

  • Before you begin flooding your cookies, pipe a few straight lines or a zig-zag line in the middle of the area you’re going to flood. Wait for the lines to dry for a few minutes. The line or lines will support the flood icing you’re going to add. Think of it as building a house. If you don’t have a good solid foundation, your house could fall down. If you use a few lines on your cookies as support for your foundation, the flood icing probably won’t fall down because of the good foundation you’ve added.
  • Like I said before, my last few batches of icing have been showing off its ability to fall and sink and look all wonky. When I pipe the lines in the center of the area I’m going to flood, it prevents the sinkholes.
  • Now, piping the lines may not work every time because we all know royal icing has a mind of its own. If it wants to sink, it sinks. If it wants to bleed and make all the colors run into each other, it bleeds. But it’s great to know we are smarter than that silly old royal icing. Isn’t it great to know we can prevent some of the issues we have by understanding how to stop its little schemes?

If you want to see how these were made by piping straight foundation lines, watch the video. It’ll show you how simple it is to be the boss of that royal icing.

bear cookies, Valentine cookies, Valentine's Day cookies, cookie decorating, royal icing

Let’s get back to decorating these panda bear cookies.

  • Once you’ve outlined and flooded the ears wait for that foundation line to dry before you flood the black fur.
  • Next, flood the back fur on the panda bear with the black flood royal icing consistency.
  • Let the cookie dry completely.
  • Once the black royal icing has dried, pipe the white outline royal icing on the edges of the rest of the panda bear.
  • Let it dry for about 10-20 minutes.

bear cookies, Valentine cookies, Valentine's Day cookies, cookie decorating, royal icing

  • Use the white flood consistency to fill the white fur area.

bear cookies, Valentine cookies, Valentine's Day cookies, cookie decorating, royal icing

  • Let the royal icing dry completely.

bear cookies, Valentine cookies, Valentine's Day cookies, cookie decorating, royal icing

  • Add the final detail to this panda cookie by piping a dot for his tail.
  • Let it dry completely.

 

bear cookies, Valentine cookies, Valentine's Day cookies, cookie decorating, royal icing

I’m not sure what you think of when you hear the words Valentine’s Day, but I hope you’ll think of me sending you a giant bear hug because that’s what I’m doing in my mind. I bet that’s what’ll happen when you give people Valentine’s Day cookies you made just for them. Be prepared because a big giant panda bear hugs coming your way!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Bear hugs,

Lisa