How to Make Leprechaun Cookies for St. Patrick’s Day
With the craziness of both Valentine's Day and then Easter in the spring, it's not often I have time to fit in St. Patrick's Day ideas. However, this year I was "lucky" enough to get the chance. And I'm thrilled to show you what I came up with!
These big-headed leprechaun cookies have just the right amount of whimsy. With most full-body cookie designs, the amount of decorating detail can be intimidating. I tried my best to reduce the work to decorate these little guys by removing the eye and arm details, while simplifying the overall body. However, these leprechaun cookies can be a bit more challenging than most of my other cookie ideas.
If you plan to mass-produce these guys as one of your St. Patrick's Day options, your best bet is using/getting a projector. A projector will really help speed up the decorating process and help pump out these cookies more efficiently.
If purchasing a projector isn't in your budget at the moment, no worries. In this tutorial I will show you how to decorate these robot cookies using a few handmade templates. It's not the fastest method for decorating, but it gets the job done.
Leprechaun Cookie Cutter
In the shop, you can find this new leprechaun cookie cutter.
Template for the Leprechaun Cookie Cutters
To help with the decorating process, I made a PDF template of all the designs of my 2019 St. Patrick's Day cookie collection, including this leprechaun cookie design.
Click the link below for the downloadable template PDF file.
This file is 3 pages long and is rather large in data size. Just a warning, it might take a moment before the file opens in your browser.
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 these leprechaun cookies, you will need the following suggested colors:
- Light Green royal icing (Two parts Americolor Egg Yellow and One part Americolor Mint.)
- Dark Green icing (I added Americolor Leaf Green to the light green icing above.)
- Yellow icing ( I used Americolor Egg Yellow.)
- Orange icing (I used Americolor Orange)
- Flesh Color (I mixed equal parts Americolor Copper and Americolor Ivory.)
- Black piping icing (I used Americolor Super Black.)
Step 1
For those without a projector, mark the guidelines where the body sections should be, as shown. I made 2 templates with template plastic from the PDF file above and used a food marker to draw the guidelines on the cookie.
Step 2
Begin by filling in alternating sections. I started with all the light green sections like the hat, arms, and pants. Let that set for 10 minutes.
Then fill in the beard with orange icing, and the hat band and one shoe with black icing. Let this icing set again for 10 minutes.
Step 3
Next, fill the remaining body sections, like the face, ears, vest, and the other shoe, as shown.
Add the big yellow buckle on top of the hat band, and add the nose on top of the face and brim of the hat. Then outline the beard and vest for definition.
Step 4
Lastly, add the center buckle detail and then draw on the smile with a food pen.
Just a head's up, the icing needs to be COMPLETELY DRY for this final step. Use a black Rainbow Dust food pen to draw on the smile line.
Leprechaun Cookie Decorating Video Tutorial
The steps above are demonstrated in the time-lapsed video below.
To accompany these leprechaun cookies, I make a few more St. Patrick's Day cookie cutter designs.
Every leprechaun needs a rainbow with a pot of gold. Also added to the shop were these half rainbow cookies- one with a pot of gold, and the other with a cloud.
The half rainbow cookies shown fit perfectly in these single cookie 5 3/8" x 3 3/4" gift boxes and these two-cookie 7"x4.5" gift boxes.
You can make any cookie combination with these options. Here I paired the pot of gold with the leprechaun cookie for a colorful gift set. The choice is up to you.
