Swan Cookie Tutorial (and my battle with butter bleed) (2024)

By Author Amber | Posted on Last updated: June 13, 2022

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One good thing about summer coming to a close is that cooler and dryer weather is on the way, which is perfect for cookie decorating. Warm weather during the summer can bring on butter bleed, which happens when the butter from the cookie stains the royal icing and leaves it looking blotchy. It doesn’t have to be humid for it to happen, just hot (humidity brings on its own set of issues) I was even struck by butter bleed in the winter at one point, when I had my cookies sitting directly under one of the heat vents in my bake shop. Lesson learned!

While butter bleed is preventable for the most part, there are still times when it’s just beyond our control. There’s more information about preventing and covering butter bleed in this post about royal icing.

These brush embroidered swan cookies were a personal gift from me to a family member, so fortunately I had complete control over how they were decorated. My original design just included the swans, but when butter bleed struck, I had to change my plan.

For products used in this and other tutorials, visit the recommended products page.

This cookie was made using my Orange Vanilla Spice recipe and measures 2×4″. My cookie recipe is available in my tutorial shop. Begin by icing the cookie in flood consistency royal icing and a tip 3. The pink color shown here is Wilton aster mauve and the blue is delphinium blue, both from the garden tone set (you can find these colors on the recommended products page).

Once the cookie is completely dry (8-12 hours of drying time), use a scribe tool to trace a heart template onto the icing. I traced a small heart cookie cutter onto card stock to make this template.

Then, use the scribe tool to sketch the swans, using the heart as a guide for the shape of their necks.

Using a tip 1 and flood consistency royal icing, outline and fill in the swans.

Use the scribe tool to help shape the icing.

Let the swans dry for about 4 hours, preferably in front of a fan. Notice the dark areas on the edges of the pink icing. That’s what butter bleed looks like.

Once the swans are dry, add the wings using the brush embroidery technique.

Make a beak with a little bit of orange icing and shape it with the scribe tool. A piping bag isn’t really necessary for this step. You could apply a drop of icing using the tip of the scribe tool or with a toothpick.

This is where I started to improvise. I used the scribe tool to draw some swags and then added a lacy brush embroidered decoration.

This is similar to how I added the curtains in the baby bassinet tutorial.

I added a bead border with a tip 1 and a medium shade of brown royal icing. I also painted these beads using a mixture of gold luster dust and alcohol, which you can learn all about in this post on painting with gold.

I finished the detail on the swans using an edible ink marker.

Have you ever encountered butter bleed? How did you deal with the situation? Let me know in the comments!

Click on the images below for more cookie decorating tutorials

Learn To Make Rainbow Swirl Cookies

Palette Knife Painting Floral Wedding Cookies

Adorable Woodland Cake Decorated With Royal Icing Cookies

Swan Cookie Tutorial (and my battle with butter bleed) (22)

Amber Spiegel, founder of SweetAmbs, is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and the author of Cookie Art: Sweet Designs for Special Occasions. Amber has over 12 years of cookie decorating experience and has traveled the world teaching others how to decorate beautiful cookies on their own.

View all posts by Amber