Nautical Cookies

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Here’s a fun nautical cookie tutorial to help celebrate the official start of summer!
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This post contains affiliate links. Read my affiliate disclosure here.
This cookie was made using my Orange Vanilla Spice recipe, which is available in my tutorial shop. The cookies were cut into 3×4″ rectangles. To make my edges as straight as possible, I use a frozen sheet of dough, a paring knife and a T-square. You can use rectangle cutters if you have them!
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Once your cookies are baked and cooled, trace a heart cutter onto the cookie using an edible ink marker. I prefer FooDoodler brand (you can find these and other products used in this tutorial in my Amazon Store).
Make marks where your lines will be. I made mine about 3/8″ apart, but you can make them wider or thinner depending on your preference. Just make sure that they line up evenly on the top and the bottom. I started 3/16″ away from the top and bottom edge. Draw lines across the cookie using the ruler as a guide.

 

Then, using stiff consistency icing and a tip 2, outline the cookie. I don’t usually pipe an outline when flooding, but I wanted my stripes to line up perfectly on the edges, so this was helpful.

This is my color palette. I added a touch of black to the blue and to the red. The gold is made with a brown icing base. More on gold icing below.

Fill in every other stripe with flood consistency icing and a tip 2, avoiding the heart shape. Use a scribe tool to help evenly distribute the icing and get it into the tight spots.

Fill in the opposite stripes within the heart.

Since these lines need to be as straight as possible, it’s best to wait about 20 minutes before filling in the blue stripes (unlike in my picnic cookie tutorial, where we could get away with wavy lines). That way they won’t get all swirled together when you use your scribe tool to distribute the icing.

Allow the icing to dry overnight. Then, use a scribe tool to draw an anchor in the lower right corner. I kept an image of an anchor in front of me while I drew it. It helps to have a reference close by while working.

Using red flood consistency icing and a tip 1, pipe the anchor. The anchor doesn’t need to be piped perfectly. I make mine by piping a line with a “U” shape at the bottom. Then I add the little circle at the top and pipe a line underneath it. I use the scribe tool to help shape the points. It’s similar to how I made this royal icing reindeer, in that the scribe tool does most of the work.

Add a rope border using brown stiff consistency icing and a tip 2. It’s done with a series of interconnected “S” shapes. This Easter Basket cookie tutorial shows the rope border technique in action.

Allow the rope border to dry for about 30 minutes. Mix gold pearl dust with a few drops of alcohol or flavored extract to paint the rope. Read this post for more information on painting with gold.

Allow the icing to dry for another 4-6 hours before handling the cookie.
A pictorial summary:

Click on the images below for more summer cookie tutorials:
 
Beach-Cookie8 
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About Amber

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.

20 thoughts on “Nautical Cookies”

  1. Pingback: Summer Cookie TutorialsSweetAmbs

  3. Hi ambs. You are my inspiration in my cookies journey.

    I have been using edible pen straight onto the cookie to trace my patterns. However the pen tips became moldy.

    How to prevent this hapening? I pitty them because so expensive and seldom to use. Can I reuse the molded edible pens?

    Any solution will help. Thanks.

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  4. Nossa seu site é perfeito ótimo parabéns estou aprendendo muito com você pena que esta tudo em inglês e tenho que traduzir tudo mais isso não é problema pois posso usar suas técnicas aqui no brasil.

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  7. Amber, just congratulations for such wonderful skills God gave you. Keep on going with more projects. I’m your fan No. 1…perhaps you can post the recipe for the cookies too.

    Greetings from Guayaquil – Ecuador

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  10. impresionantes me fascina todo lo que haces eres increible gracias por dejarnos y compartir con tod@s nosotr@s tus obras de arte eres una artista besos 😉

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    • Thank you, Cheryl!! Sorry I forgot to mention what size it is and now I’m away from the bakeshop! I think it was a 2 inch cutter and maybe about 2-1/2″ high. It fit inside the 3″ high rectangle with some space on the top and bottom.

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  13. Te felicito por todo lo que hacés!!!
    Tenés muy buen gusto y trabajás muy prolijo.
    Siempre veo tus trabajos. Te felicito.
    Soledad Córdoba.

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  14. Wow, these are amazing works of art! I am so excited to start my home based cookie business on July 1st and am so greatful for all you have taught me online.

    Reply ↓

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