How to Decorate Dye Free Back to School Sugar Cookies with Buttercream
Back-to-school season is the perfect time to get creative in the kitchen—and what better way to celebrate than with adorable back to school sugar cookies?
In this post, I’ll walk you through how to decorate a fun set of school-themed cookies, including a classic composition notebook, colorful ABCs, and a cute little backpack.
Whether you’re surprising your kids, treating teachers, or just love a good theme, these cookies are as fun to make as they are to eat.
Plus, I’m sharing my go-to recipes for soft sugar cookies and creamy vanilla buttercream frosting—perfect for decorating and even better for a treat!
I decided to use dye free colors since my family tries to be dye free whenever possible!
You can read about what natural dyes I have been experimenting with here.
Follow along for the full step-by-step photo series and video cookie decorating tutorials PLUS the recipes! Let’s get started!
This post may contain affiliate links to Amazon and Etsy, which means I may receive a commission, at no extra cost to you, if you make a purchase through a link. Please see my full disclosure for further information.*
Skip to
Part 1: Gathering the Supplies for the Back to School Sugar Cookies
To decorate these back to school sugar cookies, you will want to gather:
- 6 Icing bags
- One Wilton #2 tip, one #4 tip, and one grass tip (#233) – note: you can speed up the decorating process if you have more than one of each of these tips, otherwise just plan to rinse/dry often
- 6 Couplers
- Star cookie cutter, heart cookie cutter, ABC cookie cutters, rectangle cookie cutter, and t-shirt cookie cutter
- Pink, yellow, green, blue, and purple food dye (I used natural dyes)
- Palette knife (I use this one for these cookies!)
- Gold luster dust (this one is FD&C dye free but does have titanium dioxide), vodka or extra vanilla extract, food grade paintbrush, small dish
- Ingredients for a crusting buttercream & sugar cookie dough – found below in recipe card
Part 2: Baking the Cookies and Setting up the Icing Bags
Use the recipe card below for the sugar cookie and buttercream frosting recipes.
Back to School Sugar Cookies
Equipment
- Stand Mixer with Paddle Attachment
- Rubber Spatula
- Measuring cups and spoons
- Medium Sized Mixing Bowl
- Lined aluminum cookie sheet parchment paper or silicone lined baking sheet
- Rolling Pin
- Cookie cutters and tools see part 1 on this post for the specific tools needed
- Gel food dye I used TruColor natural food dyes but Wilton is a great gel food dye with a beginner price point
Ingredients
Buttercream Frosting
- ½ cup room temperature unsalted butter 4 ounces
- ½ cup room temperature salted butter 4 ounces
- 4 cups powdered sugar
- 1 tbsp. vanilla extract
- 1-3 tbsp. whole milk
Sugar Cookies
- 1 cup cold salted butter cubed
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 3 cups all purpose flour measured with the scoop & level method
- 2 tsp. baking powder
- 1 egg
- 1.5 tsp. vanilla extract
Luster Powder Paint
- ¾ tsp. vodka or additional vanilla extract
- ½ tsp. gold luster powder
Instructions
- Remove all of the butter from the refrigerator. You will make the sugar cookies first but the butter for the frosting needs to come to room temperature before mixing.
Sugar Cookies
- Preheat the oven to 350℉ and prepare an aluminum cookie sheet by placing either parchment paper or a silicone baking mat on it.
- In a medium sized mixing bowl, combine the flour and baking powder and mix together. Set this aside.
- Cube a cup of salted butter and then, in a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, combine the cubed butter with the granulated sugar. Mix until creamed together well.
- To the stand mixer, add in the egg and vanilla extract and mix until combined.
- Slowly add in the dry ingredients in the mixing bowl to the stand mixer.
- Roll the dough out to 3/8" thick and use the cookie cutters to cut out the cookies. Place the cookies onto the prepared baking sheet and bake for 9-11 minutes or until the tops of the cookies no longer look wet. When baking the cookies, only bake 6-8 cookies at a time to leave proper space between each cookie to cook without spreading. Overcrowding the cookie sheet will cause spread.
Buttercream Frosting
- In a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, add the room temperature salted and unsalted butter and mix on high until light and fluffy.
- Mix in the powdered sugar little by little. Add in the vanilla extract and milk about halfway through adding the sugar to help the frosting come together. Start with one tablespoon of milk and work up to three if needed, depending on the consistency you want. I like to aim for a peanut butter consistency or thinner.
- Follow the directions in Part 2 for the specific way you will divide the buttercream, color the buttercream, make the luster powder paint, and set up the icing bags.
How to Decorate the Back to School Cookies
- Please refer to Part 3 of this blog post for all of the cookie decorating tutorials.
Notes
Make your buttercream icing according to the recipe and separate it equally into six bowls:
-
-
- Keep one bowl undyed (this bowl can just be the mixer bowl)
- Dye one bowl yellow, one light blue, one light purple, one light pink, and one light green
-
For tips on working with TruColor natural dyes, check out my TruColor review and process for making the colors. I used some colors from the “Bright Set” by TruColor/PRSM which isn’t in that review post just FYI. To set up the piping bags:
- Place couplers into each icing bag and then add the frosting. You do not need to add the tips yet.
To create the gold luster powder paint:
- In your small dish, pour about a half teaspoon of luster dust into the dish. Add one drop at a time of vodka or vanilla extract until the luster powder paint is similar to an acrylic paint consistency. If you added too much, simply wait until it evaporates a bit and work on other cookies in the set first.
Part 3: Decorating the Back to School Sugar Cookies with Buttercream Frosting
Check out the video tutorial showing the overall process for decorating these back to school sugar cookies then follow the step-by-step photo series tutorial below.
How to Decorate the Heart, Star, and ABC Cookies with Buttercream
All of these cookies are decorated similarly, using the grass piping tip, a tip #4 to outline, and gold luster dust. Here’s a breakdown:
- Attach the tip #233 to your chosen bag of buttercream color. To pipe with the grass tip, hold the tip perpendicular to the cookie, squeeze out some frosting and then pull up before you stop squeezing. Start near an edge and fill your way in until the whole cookie is covered.
- Put the tip #4 onto the yellow (or you can use white) bag of buttercream. Outline the edges of the cookies. It’s okay to push the grass piping out of the way if you need to as you pipe.
- Paint the gold luster dust paint mixture you prepared in step 2 onto the yellow border. It is best to paint when the buttercream has formed a slight crust (wait about an hour) but if you’re in a hurry you can paint right away.
Repeat the same process for all of the ABC cookies, stars, and heart cookies. Choose different colors so you don’t run out of buttercream. You can keep the yellow border the same or alternate with white. It gets covered well with the luster paint.
How to Decorate the Backpack Cookies with Buttercream
- Attach the tip #4 to the white buttercream to outline and fill in the sleeves and neck on the shirt. Then, use the palette knife to smooth the buttercream and clean up the line work if needed.
When smoothing, hold the palette knife at an angle for the smoothest finish - Repeat for all of the shirt cookies and then remove/rinse/dry the tip #4 and place it onto the yellow bag of buttercream. Outline and fill in the rest of the cookie to make the backpack shape. Then, smooth the frosting. You can place the cookie in the freezer for 10 minutes to easily smooth the yellow frosting without messing up the white frosting.
- Attach the tip #2 to the blue buttercream and outline and fill in the top flap of the backpack and a zipper pocket.
- Repeat for all of the shirt cookies and then remove/rinse/dry the tip #2 and attach it to the yellow bag of buttercream to pipe a zipper and a lighting bolt to the pockets.
- Lastly, attach the tip #4 to the white buttercream to outline the edges of the shirt.
How to Decorate the Composition Notebook Cookies with Buttercream
- Attach the tip #4 to the pink bag of buttercream to outline and fill in a long rectangle along the left edge of the cookie.
- Repeat step 1 for any cookie that will be a pink composition notebook. Then, remove/rinse/dry the tip #4 from the pink and attach it to the white buttercream. Outline and fill in a rectangle in the center right of the cookie.
- Smooth the pink and white frosting. Again, you can place the cookie in the freezer for 10 minutes before smoothing if you are nervous you will mess up the shape.
Use the edge of the palette knife to cut into the frosting to create a straight line - Use the white and pink frosting to pipe blobs of frosting onto the cookie. I didn’t do the best example for this, but, you will want to keep more white along the pink rectangle edge and more pink along the white rectangle edges. Use whatever size tips you want since you are just piping small blobs. Then, place the cookie in the freezer for 10 minutes.
- Smooth the cookie once frozen. If the colors are running together too much, make sure your palette knife is at an angle when smoothing which will scrap off the topmost layer of frosting.
- Attach the tip #2 to the white frosting to re-outline the rectangle. Remove/rinse/dry the tip #2 and place it on the pink bag of buttercream. Outline the edge of the notebook, along the edge of the original pink rectangle, and add a smaller rectangle on the inside of the white rectangle.
How cute are these? I think the artificial dye free frosting turned out really well for these back to school sugar cookies!
Save the Tutorial for These Back to School Sugar Cookies
Use the image below to pin this tutorial for buttercream back to school sugar cookies to your cookie party board on Pinterest. Alternatively, use any of the social share icons on the top of the page to share it to your favorite social media site.
