Bee Cookies

I’ve seen so many cute “bee themed” parties lately!  And since our blog is called “bee in our bonnet,” it just seemed fitting that I make some bee cookies for you today!  If you aren’t having a bee party, well then you can make these cookies with a tag that says, “Will you bee mine?” for Valentine’s day.  Or you can say, “Thank-you for bee-ing a great friend.”  Yes, the word “bee” just lends itself so easily to cute favors and sayings.  So I went all out to show you a few scenarios today.

The obvious place to start is with a bee cookie cutter and some black and yellow royal icing.  If you would like my recipes, go here for my “basics of sugar cookies and royal icing” post.  I also added in some black sanding sugar and rainbow disco dust just for fun.

After my bees are cut out and cooled.  I am ready for just 9 small steps to frost!

Crazy? Yes.  Hard?  No. 

Step 1- Outline the wings and body with 20 (or higher) second black royal icing.  (explanation in this post).  Let dry.  Black is known to bleed and the more time you let it dry between layers, the less likely that is to happen.  I’d wait at least a few hours.

Step 2- Fill the body with flood consistency yellow icing.  Let dry.

Step 3- Draw in eyelashes, if it is a girl bee, and a mouth.  I used a wilton edible ink pen for this.

Step 4- With the same black frosting you outlined with, zig-zag to make the bee stripes.

Step 5- Immediately sprinkle sanding sugar onto the black and shake off the excess.

Step 6- Draw the antenna.

Step 7- Fill the wings with flood consistency white.

Step 8- Immediately sprinkle rainbow disco dust on just the wing area.  Tap off excess.

Step 9- Make the eye with a small drop of white and then while still wet, put a dot of black in the center.

And there you have two cute little bugs!

But I can’t leave well enough alone and just stop there.  So I made a few more using my projector.  If you would like to know more about using a projector, check out this post!

But what if you didn’t want a big yellow bee on your cookie?  Here is a simple, yet sweet bee cookie:

You already know how to outline and fill.  And the little bees are done ahead of time, on parchment paper then dried.  Then with a little dot of fresh royal icing, you can glue your little bees down!

First make a dab of yellow icing on your parchment.  Then while it’s wet, from the front angle squeeze a dot of black.

Then I made a small dot on the back, but this time I pulled back quickly to make the stinger slightly pointy!

Then once they are dry, you can draw their little squiggly lines with that edible ink pen.

The wings are icing transfers too.  I made lots of different sizes, not knowing which ones would look the best.

And then you just need a tiny dab of icing on top of the bee to hold your wings in place.  I held them there for a minute until they were ready to stay up.  I wanted them to look like flying wings, not flat wings!  I absolutely love this 3D cookie effect!

Thank-you Stephanie for having back here on somewhat simple!  I love to visit and see what you and the team are up to!  And don’t forget that all of you are welcome to come visit my sister and I anytime on “bee in our bonnet.”