How to Decorate Rustic St. Patrick’s Day Sugar Cookies

These St. Patrick’s day sugar cookies use a few techniques like painting with food dye and gold luster dust for an abstract rustic look.

My family celebrates St. Patricks day each year and I tend to make cookies even though I always say I won’t!

Tools To Get Started

There are 4 cookie cutters I used to make this sugar cookie set. I hand cut the pots of gold by using the base of a bunny cookie cutter. Because these are rustic, they don’t have to be perfect. Just cut out circles and use a butter knife to cut the “edge” off one side to make the top of the pot of gold flat.

• Beer mug cutter
• Shamrock cutter
• Mini shamrock cutter
• Rainbow cutter

These cookies used 2 shades of green, a nice warm gold, and black all from AmeriColor. I’ve been using this brand for years because the colors are so vibrant with only a drop or two. Also, food gel dye is more concentrated than liquid and because it’s gel it won’t change the consistency of your royal icing!

I used: Gold, Warm Brown, Super Black, Avocado, and Mint Green.

Now heres the part that you might not be familiar with. Painting on cookies with food gel! This is a fun technique that I love to use to create a more rustic or watercolor look to the cookies. To paint on cookies you need an edible food brush, some more AmeriColor food gel, and either vodka (which evaporates) or any clear extract.

There are 7 gel food colors I used to paint on the cookies: gun metal, warm brown, robin’s egg (shimmer), pale peony (shimmer), lilac (shimmer), lemonade (shimmer), and pistachio (shimmer).

We also need sprinkles for our pots of gold. You can use any color confetti sprinkles since we are painting over them with gold luster dust, but depending on how much gold you add, some of the color will come through. The ones that I used are by Chocomaker Confetti Sprinkles. You can also buy gold confetti sprinkles and skip painting with luster dust.

We are also going to use sparkling sanding sugar for the beer foam to make it sparkle!

Edible Luster Dust

I like to use luster dust that is FDA approved and edible. A lot of luster dust out there is not meant for consumption and for decoration only so always check the labels before you buy unless you are doing decorating purposes only.

To make a gold paint, mix a few drops of Vodka or clear extract with about 1/2 tsp luster powder. You can play around with the consistency but I like it to be on the thicker side. When it’s too thin, it’s less opaque. To paint onto our cookies, use food safe paint brushes. These really come in handy!

The last tool we need for St. Patrick’s day sugar cookies are piping bags! We are not using any metal tips.

Step 1: Bake Sugar Cookies

Start by gathering your ingredients for my soft cut-out sugar cookie recipe. Let the butter and egg reach room temperature. This sugar cookie dough should be chilled for at least half an hour, so make sure you plan enough time for baking and decorating.

Once your dough has been chilled, it’s time to roll it out to about 1/4 inch thick and cut out your shapes. To make pots of gold, either hand cut into a circle or use a circle cutter and with a butter knife, cut off on side. This will be the “top” of the pot.

Place the cookies onto lined baking trays with parchment paper or silicone baking mats and bake cookies according to their size (3-4inch cookies bake 9-10 mins, and cookies less than 3inches bake 7-8 minutes). Once the cookies are done, transfer them to a wire rack to cool.

Step 2: Make Royal Icing

While cookies cool make royal icing. I use my easy two ingredient royal icing recipe. You can also make royal icing a day ahead and keep it in the refrigerator in an airtight container. Just give it a stir before using.

Reference the chart below for color, consistency, and how many drops of food gel are needed to dye icing. Learn more about icing consistencies from this video.

ICING COLOR + CONSISTENCY	COLOR
White stiff consistency icing
White medium consistency icing
Tan medium consistency icing	1 drop warm brown + 1 drop gold
Light green medium consistency icing	1-2 drops avocado
Green medium consistency icing	2-3 drops mint green
Black medium consistency icing	4-5 drops super black

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Watch The Video!

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Sugar Cookie Decorating Tips

• Rotate which cookies you decorate while other cookies dry to save time.
• Cover your icing with a damp paper towel or kitchen towel when not in use to prevent crusting.
• You let royal icing dry for a few minutes so it can form a crust. It’s still very delicate but that thin crusted surface can help prevent colors from bleeding.

Foamy Beer Mug

Using tan medium consistency icing, pipe a rectangle outline and fill in.

Before the tan icing drys, use the wet on wet technique with white medium consistency icing. Add little round circles for “bubbles” and outline the mug handle and the beer glass and let dry for 5 minutes.

Place the cookie in a shallow bowl. Using the stiff icing, make swirls to make “foam” and sprinkle clear sugar sprinkles before it drys. Let the cookies dry enough to form a crust before step 4.

Once dried, lightly paint on lines using warm brown dye to give an illusion of mug lines.

Three Leaf Clovers

Pipe on light green and medium green icings by following the shape of the shamrock cookies and let dry.

With the same green icings, trace the leaves, making heart shapes, but do not fill it in.

Make the luster dust mix as described in the section above, “edible luster dust.”

Place parchment paper under the clover cookies. Using an edible food brush, splatter the gold luster dust paint onto the dried cookies tapping the brush against another brush or your finger.

Pots of Gold

Pipe white medium icing onto the pots of gold and let dry to form a crust.

Get your edible food brush and gun metal dye ready to paint! The drier the icing is, the less change of breaking the thin top layer.

Lightly paint onto the large pot of gold and let the dye dry. Eating the cookie before the dye has dried will stain your mouth!

Repeat for the mini pot of gold.

Using the stiff white icing, pipe a line on the flat edge and dip into the confetti sprinkles. Stiff icing dries fast, so work fast!

Paint on the sprinkles with the gold luster dust paint and let dry.

Rustic Rainbow

Use white medium consistency icing to outline and fill in the rainbow. Ideally, the cookie should be fully dry before step 2. It’s so easy to crack the surface when painting.

Prepare the food dye to paint (The colors are listed above under section “Tools to Get Started”). Use one color at a time to paint each part of the rainbow. I did not clean my brush in-between colors.

Paint on the rest of the colors.

Using the white medium icing, outline the clouds and add lines in-between each painted color. Let the rainbow dry fully.

Paint on the dried lines with the gold luster dust paint. See the image below for reference.

“Glue” a mini pot of gold onto one of the clouds using white icing.

The Rustic St. Patrick’s Day Sugar Cookie Set is Complete!

How To Gift Cookies

There are 3 cute ways to gift these cookies but before wrapping, make sure the cookies are fully dry!

1. To keep in freshness, add one fully dried cookie into a cellophane bag and tie with ribbon. These cellophane bags come in multiple sizes. For cookies that are 4 inches or smaller, I purchase the 5×7 inch bags.
2. Use self sealing cellophane bags that also come in handy for shipping cookies. These look professional like the single sold cookies at a bakery. These are my favorite self sealing bags. ?
3. To really take the cookie gifting to the next level, place the cookies in a box with crinkle paper. After trying a few different boxes, I think these boxes are the best and they hold four medium sized cookies! Wrap with ribbon or add a bow.

How To Store Cookies

Decorated and undecorated sugar cookies can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for up to a week. You can freeze undecorated cookies in an airtight container for up to 2 months.

RECIPE CARD