How to Make Realistic Autumn Leaf Cookies
Autumn Leaf Cookies
I make cutout cookies year round at my house, just depending on the season, they might be sailboats, Christmas trees, hearts or pumpkins. Â I am no pastry chef and my decorating skills are just so-so, but I really wanted to try to use the Wilton Color Mist and see if I could improve upon my Autumn Leaf Cookies.
I don’t know about you, but I think the final product turned out great! Â The only way I could have been more pleased was if my other colors had turned out as well as the yellow – orange combination.
Step One: Bake the Cookies
I baked my cutout cookies using this family recipe for delicious Nutmeg Sugar Cookies.  I used a variety of small and large leaf cutters.  Don’t forget you will need to let your cookies cool before frosting them. Decorating cookies is best done in steps!
Step Two: Apply Frosting Base
I used my favorite cookie frosting, which is actually any brand of creamy vanilla cake frosting. Â I colored it yellow and then thinned it with water, adding a little bit at a time until it would fall back into itself without any peaks or disturbance. Â I then dipped each cookie down into the frosting until it was thickly coated with the yellow frosting.
Step Three: Spray with Wilton’s Color Mist
I let the frosting on the cookies begin to dry (this is the tricky part), but not TOO dry and sprayed them with Wilton Color Mist in red.  I sprayed them unevenly.  I then let them dry a little longer (tricky again), and ran a toothpick through the frosting to simulate the veins in the leaves.
Step Four: Let the cookies dry some more…
I let the cookies dry on a parchment paper – lined cookie sheet until they were completely dry and then displayed them in a wicker cornucopia with candy acorns for a lovely Thanksgiving treat.
Hopefully next year I can vary the color of my leaves a little more. You can try different colors: Wilton Color Mist comes in Red, Green, Blue, Purple, Yellow, Orange, Black, Silver, Gold, and Pearl.
Please let me know in the comments below if you’ve ever used Wilton Color Mist – share a picture or two, if you can!
ADORABLE! The leaves are beautiful and those little “acorns?” Ridiculous! I am jealous…
how did you make the little acorns- what did you do to hold the shape.. the entire basket is so creative! Lovely idea!
Thank you Peggy! The acorns are Hershey Kisses, chocolate chips, butterscotch chips and mini vanilla wafers. Use a little melted chocolate (I use some of the chocolate chips) to “glue” all the pieces together. I have to hide them to make sure there are some left for the holiday after I finish making them!
They turned out great Chloe. I’ve never used the mist before and I’m not a very patient cookie decorator, but I may have to give it a try sometime. I love the acorns too!
LOVE. LOVE. LOVE. You’ve inspired me to try the mist. And those acorns look delish!
Thanks Trish! It is really easy and you see the results!
I’ve never seen this product before, Chloe…that looks interesting. With teen bakers (and their friends) in the house, it might be fun to try something different this holiday! 🙂
The teens would probably love this!
Cute cookies Chloe! Thank you for linking up to The Party Gals Linky Party!
I loved how these cookies turned out, thank you!
THESE ARE AH-MAZ-ING!!! Seriously!! Thank you for linking up to the Party Gals Linky Party!
Thank you Jessica, I was so glad I tried the Wilton Color Mist, it made all the difference!
Hello Chloe,
Dropping in from the Sunday Blog Hop. Thank you so much for linking up this post.
Your cookies look so fantastic and real! I bet they taste even better than they look too!
Thanks again for sharing, hope to see you link up again next Sunday 🙂
Those are cute! I was expecting you to have an air brush, I am glad you did it with things I can actually buy easily (and not have to make an investment in!)
Oh, no, Carlee, no airbrush for me! No investment required for these cookies! I think I will try some Christmas colors for some holiday cookies this year!
By adding water to the icing does it harden with a crust on top so the cookies can be transported?
It does harden with a crust! I love being able to fill containers with these cookies to transport them. I just give them about 3 days to firm up in the air, not sealed.
Oh my gosh! These autumn leaf cookies are soo gorgeous. And those acorns! I love that. Can’t wait to give these a try.
Thanks Andrea, and they are so easy!
Color Mist sounds like fun Chloe! I love the way you styled them spilling out the cornucopia with chocolate acorns!
Thanks Jenna, this was the first time I used it and I was so happy with how it turned out!
Oh my goodness, Chloe… I’ve wanted to make cookies like this for TWO years, but couldn’t wrap my brain around them. These are exactly it! Love what you came up with and the acorns are super adorable.
These are beautiful…and so easy to decorate…I think you win first place for best looking autumn leaf cookies with least effort
These are too pretty to eat. But I wouldn’t say no.
Look at you go, beautiful work Chloe! I’ve used Wilton’s Mist before and it is lots more convenient than dragging out an airbrush. The veins in the leaves are perfect and the acorns tie the theme together.
I love this idea! I was expecting some complicated technique that I wouldn’t have time to learn to do, but this is totally manageable! do you happen to remember how many cookies you were able to frost with the cans of spray on? So excited to try this!
Thank you Erin, I am sorry, I don’t remember how many cookies I was able to color per can of spray. Trust me, this is EASY!
It’s a few years down the line, but I’ve done Autumn leaves cookies for a few years for the Halloween/Thanksgiving season. I use royal icing, but the uneven spray with a contrasting base color is the same. I usually wait until the royal icing is completely set before spraying, so no veins on mine, but I did grab some fine tip edible markers last year with the intention of drawing some. I do like the texture that the vein inventions add to the frosting surface…and I’m loving the acorns!
I just finished a batch iced in 4 shades of yellow to dark orange, sprayed with orange and red, then just a fine mist of gold over the entire cookie (think misting perfume in the air to walk through) for a lovely warm sheen.
This all came out of leftover silver Color Mist I’d gotten for a Halloween costume for my boyfriend ( Nux from Mad Max: Fury Road…anyone? Yeah, no one had seen it that year either), and I was looking for something that I could flood or dip in a single color and embellish later. (I’d executed some very intricate and time-consuming multicolor royal icing designs before.)
My best tip is to grab some seasonal stencils at a hobby shop and get creative. My first use of the Color Mist was plain white-iced round cookies with stenciled gold and silver snowflakes…overlapped, centered, random all look great. The autumn cookie cutters were ordered soon after.
I will say that the Wilton brand is better than other spray food coloring, with a finer mist. And when layering colors or applying too much, just like spraypaint, the colors will flash together in the solvent, resulting in mottling, which can actually be a really eye-catching effect of that’s what you’re looking for.
Sounds like your have this down to a science. I think I will be trying them again next year!
Chloe, those cookies are super cute! I love them. Happy Thanksgiving!
Chloe, you are amazing. Who even knew you could get colors in a mist? I’m always in awe of everything you know.