Gingerbread Boys and Girls Cookies Tutorial

These gingerbread boys and girls cookies tutorial is literally an extension of my other post I have written on my gingerbread cookies recipe (full recipe is also at the end of this page). And in that post, I chose to decorate my gingerbread men with gold dragees. In this post, however, I have decided to take the decoration to something slightly more elaborate - cute boys and girls!

Gingerbread Boys and Girls

Whenever I make the gingerbread cookies at home, the most I would do in terms of decorating them would be adding just the eyes and mouth and some buttons. And I would either use raisins, cherries, chocolate bits, or sugar dragees to do that. But this time, I decided to decorate the cookies a bit more by turning them into gingerbread boys and girls. 

I did not use anything fancy to decorate the gingerbread boys and girls. It was just royal icing and simple piping techniques. I must say, the deco did make a difference to the cookies. Let me present to you the step-by-step guide and video tutorial on how to make simple gingerbread boys and girls decorated cookies.  

Gingerbread Boys

Gingerbread Girls

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How to Decorate Gingerbread Cookies

Check out my video on how I decorated these gingerbread boys and girls right here:

How to Decorate Gingerbread Boys and Girls - Tutorial

These are the main supplies needed to decorate these cute cookies:

• Gingerbread cookies cut out in the shape of gingerbread men – I used my gingerbread men cookies recipe to bake the cookies.
• Royal Icing
• Food coloring – I used Wilton food colors in Pink and Golden Yellow for the girl’s dress and Americolor Electric Blue and Americolor Electric Green for the boys’ shirt and pants. I also used Americolor Black to tint my royal icing black for the hair and eyes, and Wilton Brown for the nose and mouth.
• Disposable piping bags
• Wilton petal tip number 101 for the frills on the girls’ dress.

And this was how I decorated the gingerbread boys and girls:

• I baked the cookies one day in advance and stored them in an airtight container.
• Before starting the decorating work, I mixed my royal icing and had it tinted in all the colors I needed – black, brown, electric blue, electric green, pink and yellow.  
• Since I was going to ‘fill’ the cookie tops with royal icing, it had to be in a slightly runny consistency. And so, for the pink, electric blue, and electric green, once I have mixed the colors well, I added a few drops of warm water to each bowl until it has reached a runny consistency. And to check that it is in the right consistency, I used the 10-second test.

The 10 Second Test

Using a jam knife, I cut through the icing and count the number of seconds it takes for the line to disappear. Ideally, it should be 10 seconds, hence the 10 seconds test.

To make sure the icing does not accidentally become too runny, it is always advisable to start with a little water at a time until the right consistency is achieved.

In the event, it stills becomes too runny, simply add a bit of royal icing of stiff consistency into the bowl and mix until it reaches the desired consistency. This can cause the color to become lighter and so you may need to add more color to your icing.

• The rest of the colors, i.e. black, brown and yellow should not be in runny consistency. So I did not dilute them any further.
• Once the colors have all been mixed, I filled them into individual piping bags. At this point, I did not snip the ends just yet, as I did not want the icing to flow out of the bags. All the colors did not need any couplers or piping tips except for yellow which I filled into a piping bag fitted with a coupler and piping tip number 101. I have a separate page written about couplers and you can read all about them here.

How to Decorate Gingerbread Boys

The hair

• For the gingerbread boys, I started by piping their hair first. For the hair, I snipped a tiny hole in my piping bag filled with black and piped out the hair in a circular motion for curly hair. I did this on the front edges of the head (top half).

The facial features

• Next, using the same color, I did the eyes. Once the eyes were on, I used brown for the nose and the mouth.

Hair, eyes, nose and mouth on the gingerbread cookie

The shirt and shorts

• Following that, I did the shirt. The shirt was filled with royal icing. I used my electric green royal icing in runny consistency and did a quick outline for the shirt. Using the same color, I then filled in the frame of the shirt.

• After the shirt, I did the shorts. This time, I used my royal icing tinted in electric blue. I started with an outline of the shorts and then used the same to fill it all up. 
• For the final touch, I added two buttons on the shirt in black. And this was how the decorated gingerbread boy looked like:

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How to Decorate Gingerbread Girls

The hair

• Similar to the boys, I started the gingerbread girls with their hair. I wanted them to have a bob hairstyle. And so I used black (the same one I used for the boys’ hair) and piped out the outline of the hair before filling it with more black lines. 
• Since the black icing was not in runny consistency, I did not just fill the frame. I literally piped lines within the outlines to create the hair strands effect.

The facial features

• Once the hair was in place, I used the same black and made 2 dots for the eyes.
• Next, I added the gingerbread girls’ nose and mouth with brown in the same way as I did for the gingerbread boys.

The dress

• With the hair and facial features done, I went on to dress the girls. I choose a combination of pink and yellow for the dress. To begin with, I used pink (in runny consistency) and made an outline of the sleeveless dress top. And then, I filled the outline to complete the top part of the dress.

• For the bottom section, I wanted to create a frilled skirt. To achieve the frills effect, I filled my yellow icing (in normal stiff consistency) into a piping bag fitted with a small petal tip number 101. I then piped horizontal pleats in 3 layers for the bottom part of the dress.

• I left the cookies aside for the icing to set. Once set, I was able to put them in a cookie jar for everyone to enjoy the gingerbread boys and girls cookies.

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Gingerbread Boys and Girls Cookie Recipe

Here's the full printable version of my gingerbread cookies recipe:

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial as much as I enjoyed putting it together. 

Gingerbread Boys and Girls

Here are my other posts you might want to check out:

• Belle Cake - A Beauty and the Beast Inspired Doll Cake
• Baby Blue Girl 21st Birthday Cake
• How to Make Fondant Unicorn Eyes for Cakes

Happy Decorating 🙂