How to Make a Birthday Cookie Platter

When I asked for cookie platter design requests a few months ago, "birthday" was the number one request. After racking my brain on a way to fit two designs around a circular platter, I'm pretty giddy with the idea I came up with.

This platter has two designs- a birthday cake on a cake stand, and a grouping of balloons cookie. These two designs are repeated around a center circle cookie, which you can customize with a message of your choice.

Here's how you can recreate this birthday platter design that will surely sweeten anyone's birthday celebration.

Birthday Platter Cookie Cutters

The cookie cutters used for this tutorial are the birthday cake, balloons, and a center circle cutter.

You can purchase cookie cutters together as a set of three, or as individual pieces if you would like to mix and match your own combinations.

(This is the same circle cutter used in all my platter sets, like this Snowflake set, Spiral Platter, and Floral Wreath, etc.)

There are two sizes available. When arranged as a platter, as shown in the example picture, the platter measures:

LARGE- 12 inches in diameter.

SMALL- 9 inches in diameter.

For this tutorial, I'll be decorating the large size.

Templates for the Birthday Cookie Platter

To help with the decorating process, I made a PDF template available for all the new summer cookie cutter designs, including this ice cream platter set.

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 Decorating Process

To decorate this brithday cookie platter, you will need the following suggested colors:

• Tan icing (I mixed Americolor Ivory with Americolor Egg Yellow.)
• Pink icing (I used Rainbow Dust Pink.)
• White icing (I used Americolor Bright White.)
• Black icing (I used Americolor Super Black.)
• Blue icing (I mixed equal parts Americolor Teal and Americolor Sky Blue.)
• Light Blue icing (I mixed the blue above with white icing.)
• Yellow icing (I used Americolor Egg Yellow.)

Step 1

For the balloons cookie, begin by flooding the white background section. Let that icing set.

Then fill in one of the balloon sections. Quickly add a white shine detail mark.

Step 2

Next, fill another balloon section and add the wing end of the bow tie.

Then add the final balloon section and the bow tie center knot.

Step 3

Add the final details, draw in the balloon string lines with a food marker and add a balloon knot.

Step 4

For the cake stand cookie, begin by covering the white empty spaces with a thin layer of white icing. Then add the cake section with tan icing. Quickly add the center squiggle line, as shown.

Next, add the frosting top detail with pink icing. Then add the top of the stand detail with light blue icing.

Step 5

Once that icing had time to set, add the blue candle sticks design and the lower part of the cake stand.

Lastly, add the yellow flames, the cake stand outlines, and the pink cake line for dimension.

For the center circle cookie, I added phrase "Happy Birthday" using my pico projector. (You can see how I piped a similar message in this sunflower platter tutorial.)

Video Tutorial

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

Here's the birthday cookie platter all assembled. To create this entire platter requires 11 cookies-- 5 cakes, 5 balloons, and 1 center circle cookie.

This is the large, 12" version. For the tray it's on, I like to use the 12" pizza pans from Dollar Tree. They are cheap and sturdy for transporting around.

In addition to this birthday platter, there's a new 4-piece birthday set. This set has similar style in design, I just threw on some smiling faces for added cuteness.

(For reference, the size below is the SMALL size set.)