For a few years now, I’ve been playing on a recreational soccer team, the Thundercats! (yes, named after the 80′s iconic cartoon). We took the Winter season off, but the start of our Spring season is about to kickoff next week. For this occasion, I made soccer themed cookies- soccer balls and Thundercat logos!

I realized I have yet to show step-by-step instructions on how I make cookies. Well, that’s about to change… here’s how I made these soccer balls. (If you are a beginner working with royal icing, this soccer ball design may be a little challenging. However, this technique can be applied to any basic cookie design.)

Before I start explaining the decorating process, I should mention how to prepare the royal icing. I’ve said this in the past, consistency is KEY when decorating with royal icing. It’s super important to get the consistency right or else the decorating part will be frustrating and not fun at all. Here’s a refresher post on preparing your icing. Okay here we go…

1. Make a soccer ball template on quilting plastic (more info here) and use a pushpin to make tiny holes in the template where the lines intersect. Place the template on the cookie and use any pointy tool (pushpin, tooth pick, paperclip, etc.) to poke through the template holes onto the cookie. Also, make sure to mark the corners on the very edge of the cookie.

2. With piping icing, draw lines by just connecting the dots. I do about 3-4 cookies at a time before moving to the next step so the piping icing has time to set.

3. With flood icing, fill in the black shapes. Use a tooth pick to push the icing to the corners. If you see any bubbles that rise to the surface, just pop those with the tooth pick. Let it set for about twenty minutes before moving on to the next step.

4. After the black shapes had time to set, first flood only the white areas I show in step 4. If you did all the white areas at one time there is a chance the white areas will run together. (I was impatient and didn’t follow my own advice. You can see some of the white areas running together in the final cookie.) To prevent running, let these white areas set for twenty minutes before moving on.

5. After the white is set, flood the rest of the cookie with white. Ta-da, you’re done!

I hope this gives a better understanding on how to decorate a cookie. I used this same technique to do the Thundercats logo but I didn’t take pics of those steps. On future posts, I’ll make an effort to document the icing process a little better to give an inside look to how these cookies are made.