How to Decorate Hot Wheels Party Cookies with Buttercream Frosting
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My son just turned five and he requested a Hot Wheels birthday party. So fun!
I always make my kids special birthday cookies so I made him some Hot Wheels party cookies.
The set includes a Hot Wheels car, an orange track piece in the shape of a 5, and a tire on fire. Making fire with buttercream is a bit more difficult than with royal icing but I share a super easy hack to obtain fire.
I’ll be teaching you the full decorating tutorial for each of these cookie designs. You will find both video and step-by-step photos of how to make the Hot Wheels party cookies.
Let’s get started!
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Part 1: Gathering the Supplies for the Hot Wheels Party Cookies
To decorate these Hot Wheels cookies, you will want to gather:
- 5 Icing bags
- One Wilton #1 tip, #2 tip, #3 tip, #5 tip, #12 tip, and a #44 tip
- 5 Couplers
- Birthday number cookie cutter, car cookie cutter, and fire wheel cookie cutter *I made my own car and fire wheel cutters
- Red, orange, yellow, blue, and black gel food dye
- Palette knife (I use this one for these cookies!)
- Ingredients for a crusting buttercream & sugar cookie dough – found below in recipe card
- A large plate
- Parchment paper
- Projector and projector stand *optional, you can also freehand, which is what I did for this set
Part 2: Baking the Cookies and Setting up the Icing Bags
To make my own cookie cutters, I did a Frankenstein type cookie for the fire tire and I used paper for the car.
What I mean by Frankenstein, is that I took a leaf cookie cutter and a circle cookie cutter and combined them. When cutting the cookies out, cut out the circles first and then the leaf.
Once the leaf is cut out, use the circle cookie cutter to “punch out” where the circle would sit.
For the car, this is where the projector can come in handy that I liked above or you can hand draw. I used one of my son’s Hot Wheels car, laid it on its side, and drew what I could.
I also like to draw in the inner details so I can see how the cookie cutter is aligning with the details before I cut out the paper.
Then, just use a smooth knife to cut around the paper on the cookie dough to cut out the cookie.
Use the recipe card below for the sugar cookie and buttercream frosting recipes.
Hot Wheels Party Cookies with Buttercream Frosting
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
- Parchment paper
- Plate
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
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.*The orange buttercream needs to be thick so either make all your frosting thick or just add more powdered sugar to the orange frosting and keep the rest at a peanut butter consistency.
- Follow the directions in Part 2 for the specific way you will divide the buttercream and set up the icing bags.
How to Decorate the Hot Wheels 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 into five bowls:
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- three bowls only need about 1/4 cup of frosting each – dye one black, one red, and one yellow
- the remaining two bowls can be divided equally – dye one orange and one blue
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*The orange buttercream needs to be thick in order to be able to pipe with the tip #44 tip. If needed, add more powdered sugar to just the orange & stir it in before bagging it. Add each of these colors into their own icing bags with a coupler. You don’t need to add the tips yet, as they will be sharing tips.
Part 3: Decorating the Hot Wheels Cookies with Buttercream Frosting
Check out the video tutorial showing the overall process for decorating the buttercream Hot Wheels party cookies then follow the step-by-step photo series tutorial below.
How to Decorate the Birthday Number Cookies with Buttercream
- Use the orange buttercream with tip #3 to outline and fill in the sign cookies, then smooth the buttercream with the palette knife.
- Clean up the edges of the cookie with the palette knife if needed.
- Switch the tip #3 to the tip #44 and outline the edges of the number cookie. Make sure to leave the “top” and, if applicable, “bottom,” of the track open and not outlined. We want it to look like the orange tracks a car can actually drive on.
*If piping with the tip #44 is causing you issues, the buttercream is probably too soft. That could mean it is too warm or it is too thin. You can either add more powdered sugar to the orange buttercream or place the icing bag into the refrigerator for 10 minutes and try again.
How to Decorate the Fire Wheel Cookies with Buttercream
- Begin by squeezing out some red frosting onto a plate. Using in the palette knife, smooth the frosting as thin as possible. At a 45 degree angle, scrape about an inch of frosting. Then, rotate the palette knife 45 degrees in the other direction and scrape another inch of frosting.
- Press the loaded palette knife onto the cookie and pull through toward the handle of the knife to get all the frosting off onto the cookie.
- Repeat steps 1 & 2 for all the red layer of the fire.
- Do steps 1-3 for the orange frosting and then again for the yellow frosting.
- Once the red, orange, and yellow frosting is all on the cookie, place a piece of parchment paper onto the frosting and press it onto the cookie with your finger. You want to create an even layer of frosting as much as possible.
- Place the cookie with the parchment paper into the freezer for 10 minutes. Then, remove the parchment paper and use the palette knife to clean up the edges and any bubbles that may be in the buttercream.
- Attach the tip #12 to the black buttercream and pipe a circle for the tire. Make sure when piping to hold the tip close to the cookie so there is a flat top to the frosting rather than a round log of frosting, as this can be too much frosting.
- Swap the tip #12 for the #3 on the black frosting and pipe the inner details of the wheel.
How to Decorate the Hot Wheel Cookies with Buttercream
- Use the tip #3 on the black buttercream to outline the tires and and the window. Fill in the window using the black back & forth method. You won’t be smoothing this out so try your best.
- Remove/rinse/dry the tip #3 from the black frosting and attach it to the blue frosting. Outline the car and then fill it again, again with the best lines you can do.
- Attach the tip #5 to the orange buttercream and outline the bottom of the car and the rear fender.
- Remove/rinse/dry the tip #5 from the orange buttercream to the blue to outline the car’s shape, including the curve near the rear wheel and the front fender.
- Remove/rinse/dry the tip #5 from the blue and attach it to the black to outline the car window. Pipe over the original tire outline so that it matches the height of the car frosting.
- Attach the tip #3 to the yellow frosting to pipe out the beginning of the flame shape on the car body.
- Attach the tip #1 to the red frosting to outline the yellow flame.
- Remove/rinse/dry the tip #3 from the yellow frosting and attach it to the orange frosting to add some lines of orange onto the yellow flame.
- If needed, add more yellow with the tip #3.
These Hot Wheels party cookies were so fun to make for my son’s birthday. I also made him his requested cake – a Hot Wheels cake with a track running through it. I definitely had to consult Pinterest for that one!
The party was hosted at my house, but if you want to bring these cookies to a birthday party, make sure to read my post on how to package and transport buttercream sugar cookies.
Save the Tutorial for These Hot Wheels Party Cookies
Use the image below to pin this tutorial for buttercream Hot Wheels cookies to your birthday 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.
