TheArtofCustomCookieDecorating:BehindtheScenesatLME

Ever wondered how those perfectly decorated cookies are made? Take a peek into our kitchen and learn about the process from sketch to sprinkle.

It is 6 a.m. in our Bangalore kitchen, and the first thing we reach for is not coffee — it is a piping bag. A tray of freshly baked vanilla sugar cookies sits cooling on the rack, each one cut to a shape that did not exist in any cookie cutter catalogue twenty-four hours ago. By evening, these plain biscuit-coloured shapes will be a set of hand-painted safari animals for a two-year-old's birthday. This is what a custom cookie order looks like at Love Made Edible, start to finish.

The Brief and the Sketch

Every custom cookie order at LME starts with a conversation — usually a WhatsApp message with a theme, a colour palette, and sometimes a Pinterest board that is equal parts inspiring and terrifying. We listen carefully, then distil the brief down to what actually works on a 7-centimetre canvas.

We sketch every design by hand first. This is not about being old-fashioned — it is about understanding proportion. A logo that looks sharp on a business card can fall apart when it is three inches wide and made of dough. The sketch phase is where we work out which details to keep, which to simplify, and where colour boundaries will fall. We share the sketches with you for approval before a single gram of butter is weighed.

For shapes that are not standard — say, a Nandi Bull or the outline of the Bangalore skyline — we design a template and cut it from food-grade acetate. This becomes our custom cutter for the order.

Mixing and Cutting the Dough

Our sugar cookie dough is deliberately restrained in flavour — butter, vanilla, a whisper of almond extract. The cookie is the canvas; it should complement the icing, not compete with it. We cream cold butter and sugar just until combined, not fluffy. Over-creaming introduces air pockets that cause the cookies to puff and lose their shape in the oven.

Once the dough comes together, we roll it out between sheets of parchment to an even 5-millimetre thickness, then refrigerate it for at least an hour. Cold dough cuts cleanly. Bangalore humidity is not our friend here — on particularly muggy days during the monsoon, we chill the dough even longer and work in small batches to prevent it from going soft and sticky on the counter.

We bake at a moderate temperature until the edges are just barely golden. The centres may look slightly underdone, and that is exactly right — they firm up as they cool, leaving you with a cookie that holds its shape but does not snap like a cracker.

Royal Icing Fundamentals

Royal icing is deceptively simple: meringue powder (or egg whites), icing sugar, and water. That is the whole ingredient list. What makes it tricky is consistency — the same batch of icing, thinned to different levels, behaves in completely different ways.

We work with three consistencies in our kitchen:

Stiff consistency holds firm peaks and does not move when you lift the spatula. We use this for flowers, 3D details, and any element that needs to stand upright. Think of it as the consistency of thick toothpaste.

Piping or outline consistency forms soft peaks that gently curl over. It flows smoothly from a piping tip but holds a defined line. This is our workhorse — we use it for borders, lettering, and all the fine detail work.

Flood consistency is the thinnest — about the viscosity of honey. When you drizzle it back into the bowl, the ribbon should disappear into the surface within ten to fifteen seconds. This is what fills in large areas and dries to that signature smooth, almost porcelain-like finish.

Moving between these consistencies is just a matter of adding water — a few drops at a time, stirring slowly — or thickening with more icing sugar. It sounds forgiving, but in our experience, even a quarter teaspoon too much water can turn outline icing into flood icing. We add water with a spray bottle for precision.

A Note on Colour

We use gel-based food colours exclusively. Liquid food colouring is water-based, and adding extra water to royal icing throws off the consistency you have just spent ten minutes perfecting. Gel colours are concentrated — a dot on a toothpick is often enough to tint an entire bowl — and they do not dilute the icing. For deep shades like black or red, we mix the colour in the night before and let it develop; these pigments intensify over time, which means you can use less product and still get a rich, saturated hue.

The Flooding Technique: Where the Magic Happens

Flooding is the technique that gives decorated cookies their impossibly smooth, glossy surface. It is a two-step process, and the order matters.

Step one: the outline. Using piping-consistency icing and a fine tip, we trace the edge of the cookie (or the edge of the section we want to fill). This border acts as a dam — it keeps the thinner flood icing from running over the sides. We pipe about a millimetre in from the cookie edge, so the flood icing can push right up to the border and create a seamless look. The outline needs to dry for about fifteen to twenty minutes before we move on.

Step two: the flood. We fill the outlined area with flood-consistency icing, working from the edges inward. A squeeze bottle gives us control here. Once the section is filled, we use a scribe tool — essentially a fine needle — to coax the icing into corners, pop any air bubbles, and nudge the surface until it is perfectly level. Then we gently tap the tray on the counter a few times. Those tiny vibrations bring hidden air bubbles to the surface before the icing sets.

For multi-colour designs — think a sunset gradient or a marbled pattern — we flood adjacent colours while the icing is still wet. A toothpick dragged through two wet colours creates those beautiful feathered blends you see on Instagram. Timing is everything: wait too long and the first colour starts to crust; work too fast and the colours merge into mud.

A single decorated cookie can take three or four passes — base flood, detail piping, accent colours, final touches — with drying time between each layer. Patience is genuinely the most important ingredient.

Drying: The Invisible Step

Royal icing dries by evaporation, and this is where Bangalore's climate becomes a real factor. During the dry winter months, icing sets beautifully in eight to ten hours. During the monsoon, when humidity can sit above eighty percent for days, we have seen icing stay tacky for well over twenty-four hours.

In our experience, the most reliable approach during humid months is to dry cookies in a room with a dehumidifier running continuously and a fan circulating air gently — not pointed directly at the cookies, which can cause uneven drying and surface cracks. We plan monsoon-season orders with an extra half-day of buffer built in, because rushing the drying process leads to craters, colour bleeding, and heartbreak.

Each layer of icing needs to dry completely before the next one goes on. If you flood a second colour on top of a first layer that is still soft underneath, the weight causes the base to dent — decorators call this cratering. It is one of the most common mistakes in cookie decorating, and the only fix is patience.

Packaging: The Final Touch

After the final layer of icing is fully set, we individually heat-seal each cookie in a clear cellophane bag. This is not just for presentation — the seal protects the icing from humidity, fingerprints, and the occasional curious toddler hand during transit. A properly sealed decorated cookie stays fresh and crisp for up to three weeks at room temperature.

For gift boxes, we nestle the sealed cookies into custom-sized trays so they do not shift around. We have learnt the hard way that a beautiful set of cookies arriving with chipped edges undoes all the work that came before. Our cookie gift boxes start at ₹1,200 and can be tailored to any theme, colour scheme, or occasion.

Why Custom Cookies Are Worth the Wait

A custom cookie order typically needs four to five working days from approval to delivery. That lead time surprises some people, but once you understand the layering and drying involved, it makes sense. Each cookie is a small, edible painting — and paintings need time.

Our individual decorated sugar cookies start at ₹100 per piece, with pricing depending on the complexity of the design, the number of icing layers, and any hand-painted details. Simpler designs with one or two colours are on the lower end; intricate multi-layered pieces with fine brushwork sit higher.

In our experience, the most memorable cookie orders are not always the most elaborate. Sometimes it is a simple set of pastel hearts with a name piped in elegant script, or a dozen cookies shaped like a pet dog. What makes them special is that they were made specifically for someone, by hand, with care.

If you have a celebration coming up and want cookies that are as beautiful as they are delicious, we would love to hear from you. Browse our full menu to see what else we bake, or get in touch to start your custom order. We will bring the piping bags; you bring the vision.