Fruit Cookie Cutouts ⋆ Biscuits to Brownies

fruit cookies decorated with multiple colors on a platter — Fruit Cookie Collection

Turning fruit into cookie replicas is another way to celebrate the summer season. Fruit Cookie Cutouts is an opportunity to showcase your own spin on classic fruit designs and make them your own color masterpieces.

Sugar Cookie Dough

Do you have your own sugar cookie cutout recipe that you love? Maybe it’s a passed down family recipe, or one you found to be the best ever. Regardless, the cookie dough provides the foundation for these fruit cookie gems.

I can share my sugar cookie recipe I use. Totally been tried and true for many years. Super simple and takes 10-15 minutes to whip up

Fruit Cookie Worklist

Decorator sugar cookies are alot of work, no doubt. When thinking of a cookie project, I typically divide the project in two phases:

Make, bake, cool, and freeze the cookie cutouts
Make Icing and Decorate cookies

Breaking it down into two phases makes the task much easier. Decorating can take up much time as well as, time for drying of the royal icing iced cookies.

Fruit Cookie How-To’s

Making and Baking

First, I start by mixing of the cookie dough that gets chilled for 30 minutes. You can get my recipe here.

Second, the dough is rolled out to 1/4″ thick and fruit cookie cutters cut out the designs.

Third, they get baked off, usually about 8-10 minutes, and cooled.

Baked sugar cookies on a sheet pan ready to decorate — Half circle baked cookies that will turn into Citrus Fruit Cookies

Lastly, the cookies are placed in a freezer friendly container and placed in the freezer till ready to decorate. They can stay in there for up to a month. Great way to do ahead.

Decorating Cookie Cutouts

First, cookies are taken out of the freezer and placed on parchment lined baking sheets, ready to decorate.

Second, royal icing is made and colored and placed into piping bags with proper tips. You can get my recipe here.

three bowls of colored royal icing — Coloring Royal Icing

Royal Icing Consistency

This method uses two different consistencies of icing:

Stiff (for piping the white on citrus and leaves)
Medium- consistency of honey

Medium consistency royal icing is placed in a small bowls of colors.

The tops of cookies are dipped in and shaken off, then placed on the sheet pan to fully dry and harden.

When cookies are dry, the white and green are then used to finish the accent decorations for the cookies.

Apples

Apples are dipped in red medium consistency icing and allowed to dry. Green stem and leaves are pipped on.

Strawberries

Strawberries get dipped in the same red icing and dried. White dots piped and green leaves piped on to finish.

Grape Cookies

These are my favorite; stiffer icing is used to pipe the dots with a plain round top and dried. Green stems and vines applied for a realistic look.

Citrus Fruit Cookie

decorated fruit cookies on a sheet pan — Love the colors

Lemons, limes, and oranges all get decorated the same way differing only in colors. White icing is applied with a Wilton tip 2 to give it those defining lines to bring it to life.

Presentation is Everything

Not only do these guys make a fun presentation, but they are delicious to eat too! I shared them to one of my volunteer organizations and they loved them. They make a beautiful cookie display and presentation. Color is something that always makes great presentations.

Also, baking and decorating in the two-step method makes this fruit cookie project a bit simpler and easier to tackle.

decorated sugar cookie cutouts to resemble fruit on a platter — Not sure which one to eat first?

Let me know your favorite cookie project!

Other fun cookie projects:

About Author

Stacey

Hi! Welcome to my kitchen! Pull up a chair and let me share some of my favorite recipe and ideas.

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Tags: cookies, royal icing, royal icing sugar cookie