How to impress someone with your decorating prowess: Tie-dye a cookie! They’ll be amazed, and you, meanwhile, will be sitting there like, “Well, I just dragged a toothpick through the icing, so…”

STEP 1: Make royal icing.
You’ll want at least one color of thick consistency (to outline the shirt). You’ll also need a bag of each color in thin consistency.

STEP 2: QUICKLY pipe the colors onto the cookie in whatever pattern you want.

STEP 3: Drag a toothpick from the center circle outwards. Take a new toothpick each time, so the colors don’t run together.

Step 4 (optional): Wear bell-bottoms and sing to yourself whilst placing flowers in your braided hair.
Just joking. I’m a child of the 80s and have no idea what happened in the 60s. Actually, I don’t even know if tie-dye is from the 60s, but simply judging from a lifetime of Homecoming Week Spirit Days, usually with a “Decades” theme, most people agree with me.

The royal icing crusts quickly. Do not take your time piping the color on, because you’ll find it will start crusting almost immediately and you won’t have a smooth finish. Just throw it on there, I promise! And don’t delay with the toothpick-pulling, either. Time is your enemy in this case. 🙂

You’ll see some flecks of green in the step-by-step photo above. This is because the bag of royal icing I was using had already started to crust around the top of the bag, and the crusty bits fell off into the fresh icing. Try to keep the top of your bag facing upwards so this doesn’t happen to you! Do not let the bag droop to the side! Go ahead! Give it a whirl! And if you try it, post a photo in the comments below– I’d love to see them!