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Updated on April 9, 2024 by · This post may contain affiliate links ·

Kate Spade Inspired Sugar Cookies

Skill level: Intermediate

If you're like me, you've always wanted to create those beautiful cookies you see on Pinterest and Instagram but know ZERO about how it's actually done. Ok, maybe not zero but almost zero. I'm fairy certain there is some sort of magic cookie dough recipe and royal icing involved. All I know is when I attempt cookies, they look more like pizzas and that's not a good thing!

Thank goodness Susan Trianos has agreed to share some incredible cookie secrets with us! Everything from how to make the perfect sugar cookie dough, how to customize the flavors, how to keep your cookies perfectly shaped during baking, how to make Royal Icing for piping and flooding easily and reliably every time and obviously, how to decorate those cookies to Kate Spade perfection!

I was so inspired while I was editing this video that I actually made some royal icing and piped with it successfully and it was so easy! I can't wait to make some cookies!

1:23:34 Minutes of Instruction

What You Will Learn

  • How to create delicious, high-end sugar cookie designs
  • Susan's tips and tricks to get perfectly-shaped sugar cookies
  • How to make easy-to-use royal icing that makes decorating a breeze
  • Learn to paint golden highlights and details onto modern, bold designs
  • Several different techniques to stripe cookies, fill with ease, pipe perfect patterns and more!

Tutorial Chapters

  1. Rolling out the cookie dough 0:54
  2. Baking pan tips 6:58
  3. Making royal icing 9:03
  4. Thinning icing 13:20
  5. Piped and flooded technique 21:16
  6. Piped and flooded stripes technique 23:04
  7. Polka dots wet-on-wet technique 27:24
  8. Quick piped flooding technique 32:56
  9. Wet-on-wet hearts 37:10
  10. Wet-on-wet roses and leaves 40:08
  11. Dipping technique 44:30
  12. Fondant-covered cookie 48:24
  13. Textured-fondant cookie 52:16
  14. Piped accents 55:20
  15. Fondant accents 1:04:42
  16. How to get a perfect heart pattern 1:08:16
  17. Artistic brush stroke technique 1:10:12
  18. Painting with gold 1:13:30
  19. Piped petals and leaves 1:17:58

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About Liz Marek

Liz Marek is a professional cake artist and recipe developer who has been teaching baking and cake decorating since 2008. She founded Artisan Cake Company in Portland, Oregon in 2009 and now runs Sugar Geek Show, where she publishes kitchen-tested recipes, food science explanations, and step-by-step tutorials.

Liz is best known for sculpted and hyperrealistic cakes. She won Netflix's Is It Cake? Holiday 2 in 2025 with a hyperrealistic Santa cake, and has competed on and won Food Network cake competitions. Cake Masters Magazine named her one of the top 10 cake artists in 2017. She is the author of Artisan Cake Company's Visual Guide to Cake Decorating and a graduate of the Oregon Culinary Institute.

Her focus is on explaining not just how a recipe works but why it works, so bakers can troubleshoot instead of guess. Every recipe on this site is tested before it's published.

Liz teaches full-length cake tutorials, including sculpted and hyperrealistic cakes, at Sugar Geek University.