Items You’ll Need:

• Sweetopia’s Cookie Recipe (Shortbread, Gingerbread or recipe of your choice)
• Oval Cookie Cutter (size is personal choice)
• Royal Icing
• Food Gel Colorings (pink, white, black)
• Piping Tips (#’s 1, 2, & 3)
• Piping Bags
• Couplers
• Parchment Paper or Transparency Sheet
• Shortening
• Cameo Template (use your own personalized ones or download ours here)
  *Make a personalized cameo for your recipients, like Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds did for their wedding as seen on Martha Stewart

Instructions:

Once your cookies have been baked, you’re ready to decorate. Using a #3 piping tip and pale pink royal icing, outline and flood the base of your cookie.

While your cookies bases are drying, make your royal icing cameo transfers. The transfers are a nice option as they can be piped while the cookie bases are drying, and make the ‘drawing’ portion of these cookies easy, as the shape is traced.

Use the cameo template as is, or resize it in a photo editing program, in the print options or even with a photocopier, to match the oval cookie cutter you’d like to use.

Cut the transparency (or parchment paper) out larger than the size of cameo image you’ll be piping. Lightly coat the transparency with a small amount of shortening using some paper towel. This helps make the royal icing shape easier to remove when it’s dry. Place the cameo image on a flat surface, such as the back of baking sheet or a book, and tape the transparency over it. (I’ve also taped a white sheet of paper under my transparency, so that the details are easier to see in photos).

Using a #1 piping tip, trace the outline of the cameo shape, and flood with black royal icing. Make extras as royal icing transfers can break easily. Let the icing dry for at least 24 hours.

In the meantime, using a #2 piping tip, pipe larger dots evenly spaced around the perimeter of your pink base.

Let those dry for approximately 15 minutes so that the dots set, and then pipe the smaller dots in between. Use the same piping bag fitted with a #2 tip, just use less pressure and less icing for the smaller dots.

Once the cameo transfer is dry, gently remove it by peeling the backing away, and pipe a small amount of black royal icing on the back of it.

Place it face up on the cookie and gently press so that the transfer adheres to the cookie.

Pipe the white royal icing details (necklace and dress).  Let those details dry and you’re done!