Skin Tone Royal Icing Colors For Cookies – Diversity Day

Today I’m sharing the most simple cookies I’ve ever shared. As a matter of fact they’re totally naked. Yet they called for mixing over 20 colors of icing and they’re probably one of my most favorite cookies I’ve ever shared, possibly one of the most important. Have I confused you yet? Today, I’m sharing all about skin tone royal icing colors. 20 cute little hand cookies, in 20 different skin tone icing shades.

Because Every Little Cookie Matters

Before we dive into the cookies let me rewind just a little to tell you why a post all about skin tones icing is so close to my heart, and why hopefully it will be for you too. (Insert magic flashback noise and wavy screen effect.) As I was mindlessly scrolling social media one day (probably to avoid laundry) I came across an article that piqued my interest. Honestly I couldn’t tell you where it came from, who wrote it or even the main point. But one part stuck out to me, the part where the author spoke about growing up and wishing for a doll of her own skin tone, one that looked like her. She has warm dark skin and the dolls in the stores were almost always pale and peachy. Thankfully, today, this isn’t as big of an occurrence in dolls in the awesome world we live in, as we have bought every shade of skin possible in dolls for our daughters. But having 4 girls myself, the story broke my heart, and stuck with me to this day. While we might have plenty of baby doll skin tones diversity is still something we’re working on as a culture. In short, I told myself that I would keep that author’s story in my memories looking forward. Although it may not be a grand gesture, it’s something. Sometimes it just takes a little something to make a big difference.

Fast forward to last winter and I found myself making gymnastics cookies for my oldest daughter’s team dinner. I of course volunteered to bring cookies, (like duh) and I settled on cute little leotards and gymnast heads sporting buns. I chose a couple different skin tone icings and a few different colors of hair and made sweet little sparkly leotards. As I handed the cookies off I was particularly happy with the glitter effect on the Leo’s secretly hoping they would notice…they didn’t. But as I sat waiting for my daughter to get her dessert, one little girl popped up, “ Mom LOOK! I found a cookie that looks JUST like me! It even has a red headband. I never see cookies like me!” Ok, so I got lucky with the headband and I’m pretty sure she didn’t know I was the one who made them, but I’m certain she didn’t know how she filled my heart right up that night. One cookie, one happy girl. That’s all I needed just one.

That night as I drove home I wondered how other cookiers dealt with diversity. Do they make sure to include multiple skin tone icing options when possible? Do they confirm skin tones when taking orders? That’s when I came up with the idea to make an entire post dedicated to skin tone icing colors and since today is world diversity day, I couldn’t think of a better time to share!

So here it is! My little labor of love skin tone royal icing chart! First I’d like to say a big HIGH FIVE (or like 10 of them) to Kaleidacuts for sharing her oh so cute hand cookie cutter. All 20 hands were made from a handful of different colors of AmeriColor gel coloring. I started with 10 shades of icing inspired by makeup colors! Then I lightened each one with white icing giving you a darker and lighter shade. Some of the differences were pretty similar and others pretty different. Despite the entire sink of mixing bowls and spatulas, the little experiment was pretty fun to do. Although I’ve included 20 different colors/shades I can’t possibly include all the beautiful colors of skin there is in the world this is a great starting point for mixing skin tone icing!

My hope is this little chart will not only come in HANDY to help you remember to include a little diversity in your cookies, but also serve as an easy tool to help color skin tone icing, because let’s face it that struggle is so real. It can even serve as a little guide to let your cookie customers pick out the color of skin tone they would like on their cookies. After all, shouldn’t all birthday girls get princess cookies that look just like them?

SKIN TONE ICING COLOR RATIOS

1/2 Chocolate + Super Black 2/1

3/4 Chocolate + Warm Brown + Ivory 3/2/1

5/6 Warm Brown

7/8 Warm Brown + Lemon Yellow 3/1

9/10 Mauve + Ivory 1/1

11/12 Ivory

13/14 Warm Brown

15/16 Peach + Soft Pink + Ivory 3/2/1

17/18 Dusty Rose + Ivory 1/1

19/20 Mauve + just a tiny bit of Ivory

I sincerely hope you guys love this skin tone icing post, and find it useful in the future. Let me know below, would you like to see more posts like this?