Sitting Hula Girl Cookies

Out of all the types of cookie designs to decorate, I would probably rate "people" cookies as my most challenging to do. When decorating a full body person, there are so many individual parts to consider, and quite possibly mess up, when piping. However, I found a few tricks to keep things simple and avoid certain details all together.

Take the design of these hula girl cookies, for example. To avoid detailing an entire body, I opted to show a side profile instead, while covering almost all of her lower half with a grass skirt. Also, I positioned her in a seated position, which helped me hide the hands and feet. Lastly, the most crucial part, her face, was covered up mostly by her hair, and having her eyes closed made the facial details pretty easy to draw on.

Now that you know my thought process when sketching up people, let me show you how I made these sitting hula girl cookies so you can reproduce them yourselves.

Preparing the Dough

The shape of these hula girl cookies were constructed by combining two flip flop cutouts perpendicular to each other, as shown below. The flip flop cutter I used was part of this Wilton 3-piece summer cookie cutter set.

Sitting Hula Girl Cookie Template

Like I did for the palm tree cookies in my previous post, I am providing a template to help guide you during the decorating process.

If you have a Kopykake or Pico projector, just print it out (or pull it up on your mobile device) and you’re set. For those without a projector, you can still print it out, cut out the body sections, and trace the design onto the cookie with an edible food marker.

You can download the hula girl cookie template HERE.

Decorating Process

Step 1

Begin by tracing the body section (face, torso, and knee) onto the cookie with an edible food marker. I made a template to guide me, but if you have a Kopykake or Pico projector you can skip this step.

Step 2

With flesh-colored royal icing, outline and fill the body section. With dark brown icing, fill in the coconut bra section. Let this icing set.

Next, using the dough imprint line as a guide, outline and fill the hair section with black royal icing. Let the icing dry (about 20 minutes).

Step 3

With green piping icing, pipe strains of grass for the skirt. I used two different shades of green but that's totally optional. Continue adding more layers of grass until the skirt area is covered to your liking. Be sure to give each layer time to set before adding the next.

Step 4

Once the skirt area is completely covered, add the arm detail over the body with flesh-colored icing.

Step 5

Next, add pink flowers around the waist with medium consistency icing. Be sure to spread them out if you would like flowers of a different color in between. Also, with the same pink icing, add a lower lip detail as shown.

After the pink icing had time to set, add orange flowers in between the pink ones. Then add the upper lip detail over the lower lip to form the complete mouth.

Step 6

Once the cookie is completely dry, add the facial details with a food-safe pen. I love using my Rainbow Dust food pen to add details because of its fine tip. Also, add a yellow bead to the centers of the flowers.

Step 7

Lastly, the final detail is to add the flower in her hair. I made these as drop flower royal icing transfers using a Wilton #224 tip.

With the tip attached to an icing bag of really stiff royal icing, touch the end down on a sheet of parchment paper, then squeeze while turning the bag a quarter turn, then release and pull up. Follow up with a little bead of yellow in the centers.

Because it's better to see this in action rather than me trying to explain it, here is a great video by Little Lady Cakes performing this technique.

Step 8

Once the royal icing flower transfers have dried, attach them to the hula girl cookies with a little extra royal icing.

That completes the duo of tutorials for this luau cookie set. To look back at the palm tree cookies I made to accompany these hula girl cookies, please visit this link.