How to Make Cute Little Cherry Sugar Cookies with Royal Icing

I have a question for you. What time of year can you pick cherries? I don’t know the answer, but I do know you can make cherry sugar cookies any and every day of the year. Would you like to make some with me? Let’s do this!

cherry cookies, sugar cookies, royal icing, The Bearfoot Baker, how to decorate

These cookies are simple, fun, and cute. I hope you’re ready to decorate with me.

Supply List:
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Recipes:
Cookie Cutter:
Royal Icing Colors:
(I used 15-Second Consistency Icing for these cookies.)
  • Green- Whatever gree food gel color you like.
  • White– I add white food gel color to my entire batch of royal icing before I add other colors. It can help prevent your colors from bleeding as the icing dries.
  • Red- There are several different red food gel colors to choose from. You just need to be careful because some of them may have a bitter taste.
A few of my tips about red food gel colors:

I like to use Americolor Tulip Red because it doesn’t have a harsh taste to me, but it isn’t a super bright red.
Americolor Super Red is bright, but to me, it does taste bitter.
I’ve used Wilton No-Taste Red for years and I’ve had good results. I just wish you could add drops like you can with the other brands. Scooping it out isn’t a great experience for me because I always seem to be out of toothpicks and manage to get the red color all over the place. 
You can also color your royal icing a little bit ahead of time because the colors will develop before you use them. If you don’t let them develop first they will dry darker than the color of the icing in your decorating bag.
The Cookie Countess also has a pretty Royal Red Velvet that I use often. 

Tools:

How to Make Cute Little Cherry Sugar Cookies with Royal Icing Video:

Enjoy this quick simple video!

Let’s decorate!

cherry cookies

  • Bake your cookies and let them cool completely. 
  • Draw the cherries and stems on the cookie with your food-safe marker.

sugar cookies

  • Outline the cherries with the red royal icing.

royal icing

  • Once the first cherry is flooded add the white highlight and do it fast. If you let this start to dry you will have a rough-looking highlight on your cherry. Check out my image below.

sugar cookie decorating tips

See how the white line doesn’t look smooth. That is why you need to work fast or wait until the red surface has dried enough to hold the white line.

  • Let the cherry dry for 10-15 minutes before you flood the next cherry. If you flood it before the red has time to form a crust the two cherries will run together to look like a red blob. But on a good note, if that happens you can just add an outline to each cherry after it dries. It’s a sugar cookie so don’t get stressed. You can always eat them so there is no proof you even made cookies. 😉

wet on wet sugar cookie decorating

  • Now it’s time to flood the second part of the cheery sugar cookie and add the white outline. 

cherry cookies, sugar cookies, royal icing, The Bearfoot Baker, how to decorate

  • Before you make the white outline you can use your turkey lacer or toothpick to push the icing into place. 
Let the cookies dry for about ten to fifteen minutes.

The Bearfoot Baker

  • Let’s go green! Okay, you can do the stems and leaf in green or you can make the stems a tan or brown color. To be honest, I didn’t want to mix another color of icing so I used green, but you do you and whatever color makes you happy!

tipless piping bags

  • Pipe the leaf, stems, and a dot on top of the stems. 

cherry cookies, sugar cookies, royal icing, The Bearfoot Baker, how to decorate

  • Flood the leaf and use the turkey lacer to smooth out the icing. 
All done!

simple cherry sugar cookies

I hope you enjoy making these cherry sugar cookies. They are super simple and really cute. I wanted to share a few tips and tricks because you can learn a lot when you decorate. Adding white food gel color to my entire batch of royal icing before I make my individual colors really helps prevent the bleeding issues. And, working fast when you add a highlight is good so you don’t have bumps or lines in the first color you piped.

Look at the difference in the white lines on the cherry above. Can you tell which one I did quick, fast, and in a hurry? I hope you found something helpful in this tutorial and I’ll be back with more soon. Have a great day y’all!

Bear hugs,

Lisa