How to Decorate a Personalized Elf Name Plaque Cookie with Royal Icing (Christmas Cookie Tutorial)

Add a little extra magic to your Christmas cookie decorating with this adorable elf name plaque cookie tutorial. In this step-by-step guide, I’ll show you how to decorate an elf holding a customizable plaque using royal icing, making it the perfect option for personalized holiday cookies. Whether you’re creating cookies for gift sets, place settings, or custom orders, this design is a fun and festive way to add a meaningful, personal touch. The elf cookie cutter used in this tutorial is available in my shop, so you can easily recreate this design and make it your own this Christmas season.

Christmas Elf Name Plaque Cookie Cutter

Just added to the shop for the upcoming Christmas season is this Christmas Elf name plaque cookie cutter. This cookie cutter can be decorated easily as a boy or a girl elf. Just add eyelashes.

For this tutorial, I'll be decorating the LARGE size cookie cutter.

Templates for the Christmas Elf Cookies

To help with the decorating process, I made a PDF template available for this season's Christmas collection, including this Christmas elf cookie.

You can download these cookie templates HERE.

If you have a Kopykake or Pico projector, just print it out (or pull it up on your mobile device) and you are good to go. For those without a projector, follow the suggested steps below by tracing the design onto the cookie with an edible food marker.

The Cookie Decorating Process

For the colors used for these Christmas string light cookies, you will need the following suggested colors:

To decorate these cookies, my icing of choice is royal icing. Here's how to make royal icing for Christmas cookie decorating.

For the colors used for these Christmas cookies, you will need the following suggested colors:

• Red icing (I used Americolor Super Red.)
• White  icing. (I used Americolor Bright White.)
• Black icing (I used Americolor Super Black.)
• Tan icing (I used Americolor Ivory mixed with Americolor Copper.)
• Green icing (I mixed Americolor Egg Yellow with Americolor Leaf Green and Super Black.)
• Brown icing (I mixed Americolor Ivory with Americolor Espresso.)
• Pink icing (I used a tiny amount of Americolor Super Red.)

Step 1

Begin by filling in the upper cap section and lower name plaque section with green icing. Let this icing set.

Next fill in the face section around the eye holes with tan icing.

Step 2

Once the base layer of icing had time to set, add the red mittens and white cap band.

Then add the hair and eye details.

Step 3

Add the final details like the red lines on a the cap, the eyebrows, and the center nose.

Step 4

Using a cookie projector, I added custom names in yellow icing.

Christmas Elf Cookie Decorating Video Tutorial

The steps above are summarized in this time-lapsed video I put together below.

Here's the finished elf cookie.

What I love about this cookie cutter design is that it can be decorated as a boy elf or a girl elf. To make a girl elf cookie, I just made the cap color pink and drew on eyelashes.

Our shop also has two additional Christmas name plaque designs. Here's the reindeer name plaque cookie.

And he's a classic Santa name plaque cookie cutter.

This elf name plaque cookie is a simple yet impactful way to elevate your Christmas cookie designs with a personalized touch that customers, friends, and family will love. By breaking the decorating process into easy, manageable steps, you can confidently recreate this design using royal icing for a clean, polished finish. If you’d like to make this cookie set yourself, be sure to grab the elf name plaque cookie cutter from my shop, and don’t forget to explore the rest of our Christmas cookie cutters and decorating tools for even more festive inspiration this holiday season.