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Bee Cookie Tutorial

Bee Cookie Tutorial

These bee cookies are made using a few different royal icing techniques including flooding, royal icing transfers, wet on wet technique, painting with pearl dust, and bead borders.
The royal icing transfer technique is now available as a video tutorial in my shop.
BeeMyValentine
This is the color palette that I used for this project.
  • The bee bodies and wings are made with Wilton golden yellow.
  • The base of the cookie is a mixture of Wilton brown and a touch of juniper green.
  • I added black to the brown icing for the darkest of the three colors, which I used to pipe the honeycomb pattern.
Visit the recommended products page for decorating products used in this tutorial.
bees color palette
Make a template for the bee bodies by tracing the image onto a piece of paper (or you can use the template that comes with the royal icing transfer video tutorial). Place the template on a sheet pan (I turn my sheet pan upside down so that the sides don’t get in my way while I’m piping). Cover the template with wax paper and secure it with tape.
bees template
Use medium consistency royal icing and a round decorating tip 2 to pipe the body.
Bees pipe body
Let each section to dry for about 5 minutes before filling in the next.
Bees pipe bodies3
Allow the bee bodies to dry overnight.
bees pipe bodies2
To make the bee wings, cover a paper template in packing tape to prevent it from sticking to the fondant and then cut the wings out.
Color a small piece of fondant with golden yellow and roll it out very thin.
bees roll fondant
Using a scribe tool or a small knife, cut out the wings.
bees cut wings
Peel away the excess fondant.Remove the wing templates.
bees fondant wings
Allow the wings to dry overnight.
bees fondant wings2
Using Wilton pearl dust in bronze and a small brush, dust the wings starting from the inside and move the brush out toward the edges.
bees dust wings1
Mix a small amount of Wilton pearl dust in silver with a few drops of alcohol such as vanilla extract or vodka. Use a small brush to paint the details of the wings. Read this post on how to make gold icing to learn more about this process (this process works for gold, silver, white, and even painting with gel paste colors)
bees paint wings1
Once the bee bodies are completely dry, dust the edges using bronze pearl dust.

bees dust bodies

Use the same mixture of silver pearl dust and vodka that was used earlier to paint the details onto the bee body.
bees paint bodies1
Carefully remove the bee bodies from the wax paper using an offset spatula.
bees remove bodies
bees remove bodies2
One the bees are ready, ice a 3×3″ square cookie with flood consistency royal icing and a tip 3. Visit my tutorial shop for a video with full instructions on flooding with royal icing as well as my cookie and royal icing recipe.
bees flood cookie
While the first layer of icing is still wet, use a round decorating tip 1 and flood consistency royal icing (use the darkest of the three shades of icing shown in the palette at the beginning of this post) topipe the honeycomb design. It is made up of a series of vertical lines connected by a zigzag line. You’ll have about 5 minutes to complete this wet-on-wet design before the icing starts to dry.
bees honeycomb
Gently tap the cookie on the table so that the icing settles.
bees tap cookie
While the icing is still wet, place the wings on and press them down gently.
bees apply wings
Then, add the bee body. Allow the icing to dry overnight.
bees apply body
Once the cookie is completely dry, dust the edges with Wilton pearl dust in bronze.
bees dust edges
Paint the legs using a mixture of silver pearl dust and alcohol.
bees paint legs
Use a round decorating tip 2 and stiff consistency royal icing to pipe a bead border. Visit my shop for a video on how to make royal icing and a video on how to pipe a bead border.
bees pipe border
bees finished
bees final
Click on the images below for more Valentine’s Day cookie projects: coversation-heart5Valentines-Day-Cookies2 TuftedCookie

Amber Spiegel, founder of SweetAmbs, is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and the author of Cookie Art: Sweet Designs for Special Occasions. Amber has over 12 years of cookie decorating experience and has traveled the world teaching others how to decorate beautiful cookies on their own.

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