How to Make an Apple Pencil Cookie Platter
Usually, back-to-school designs have been centered around the kids. However, a couple teacher friends of mine requested a back-to-school design for themselves too.
That's where this new apple pencil cookie platter came about. This platter design is a great gesture idea that could be placed out in a teachers' lounge and shared amongst their coworkers.
The platter consists of two designs, an apple and a pair of pencils, repeated around a center circle cookie. Below, I laid out all the steps on how I pulled this apple pencil cookie platter together.
Apple Pencil Platter Cookie Cutter Set
New this back-to-school season is this apple pencil cookie platter. This set includes 3 cookie cutters: an apple, a pair of pencil tips, and a center circle. You can purchase both cookie cutters together, or as a 2-piece without the circle cutter.
(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.
Template for the Apple Pencil Platter Cookie Set
To help with the decorating process, I made a PDF template of all of the new Back-to-school cookie cutters, including this platter design.
You can download all the 2021 Back-to-School 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
For the colors used for these apples and pencil cookies, you will need the following suggested colors:
- Yellow royal icing. (I used Americolor Egg Yellow.)
- Tan icing (I mixed equal parts Americolor Copper and Americolor Ivory.)
- Black icing (I used Americolor Super Black.)
- Red icing (I used Americolor Tulip Red.)
- Green icing (I mixed equal parts Americolor Egg Yellow and Americolor Mint.)
- Brown medium icing (I used Americolor Chocolate Brown.)
Step 1
For the apple pieces, begin by filling in the heart bite and the brown stem, as shown.
Then fill in the surrounding red area of the apple.
Step 2
Next fill in the leaf area. Let this icing set up for about 15 minutes.
Then add the outline detail for the leaf.
Step 3
For the pencil cookie piece, start by filling in one pencil body with yellow icing and the other pencil's tan tip. Let the icing set.
Then fill in the other body and tip sections, as shown.
Step 4
Add the finishing details like the black lead tips and the pencil body lines.
Step 5
For the final, center message cookie, begin by flooding the entire cookie with black icing. Let this icing dry completely.
Once dry, I piped the Back to School message using my projector.
Video Tutorial
The steps above are summarized in this time-lapsed video I put together below.
Here's the final school cookie platter all assembled. To create this entire platter required 11 cookies-- 5 apples, 5 pencils, 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.
