Instead of spending money on candy eyeballs at the store, I will show you how to make edible googly eyes! This quick and easy recipe will have you decorating all of your treats with homemade candy eyeballs before you know it!
You may have noticed that there are a lot of fun Halloween ideas out there on Pinterest and your favorite blogs lately. Many of those ideas use edible googly eyes – you know, those little white eyes with black pupils that are made out of royal icing. You can purchase them at the craft store or the cake decorating store, but a little bag of them can be a little pricey. And if you need a lot, that may be more money than you are willing to spend! So today I am going to show you how to make edible googly eyes so you can make as many as you want for just pennies!
I started with a bag of royal icing mix that I purchased at our local cake decorating shop but it is also available at craft stores in their cake decorating sections. Using a mix is the easiest way but if you can’t find the mix I’ll also share a recipe with you that you can make at home from scratch. You can literally make hundreds of googly eyes for what you would pay for one small bag of them at the store.
How to Make Royal Icing
The trick with using royal icing is getting it the right consistency. Not too thick and not too thin. One trick is to dip a spoon into the icing and let some of the icing fall back into the bowl. You want that icing you just dripped in to disappear into the icing in the bowl within about 10 seconds or so. If it takes longer add a teeny, tiny bit more water. Only a few drops at a time. I used 1 Tbsp water for every 1/2 C of royal icing mix.
After making the royal icing, add black food coloring to 1/3 of the batch. I like to use the Black Americolor Food Color. Make sure to keep it covered with a damp paper towel so it won’t set up or dry out.
Candy Eyeballs
Cover a cookie sheet with wax paper. Attach a number 4 tip onto a disposable cake decorating bag and fill with white royal icing. Then, holding the bag straight up, make dots of icing.
If your icing is the right consistency the little point that is left will settle back down into the eye. But if it doesn’t, add a few more drops to your icing. If the eye spreads too much, your frosting is too thin. Just add a little more of the mix.
And be sure and keep your tip clean by wiping it off often. Royal icing sets up quickly and it will start to harden on the outside of your tip.
I used about 1 1/2 C of royal icing mix and got a cookie sheet and a half out of it. That is a lot of candy eyeballs!
Next put the black royal icing in a piping bag with the same number 4 tip. Go back and add the pupil to each eye.
Let them sit out to air dry for 24 hours to harden up. After they are dry, they will pop right off the wax paper. If they stick to the paper they are not dry enough yet.
Keep them stored in an airtight container until ready to use.
Royal Icing Recipe
This easy recipe makes the perfect royal icing!
- 4 egg whites
- 4 C powdered sugar
- 1 tsp lemon extract optional
- water as needed
- Beat egg whites large bowl with mixer at high speed until foamy
- Gradually add sugar and lemon extract.
- Beat at high speed until thickened and desired consistency
- If it is too thick add a few drops a water, a little at a time. If it is too runny add some more sugar.
Now use some of those googly eyes to make these cute Googly Eye Donut Creatures!
For directions and more ideas on ways to use googly eyes check out this post.
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I remember needing edible eyes for cupcakes and couldn’t find the store bought ones so thanks for the instructions. They look great.
What a great idea 🙂
How fun is that?!? My kids would love to make their own eyeballs…
You know I LOVE googly eyes- didn’t even occur to me that I could make my own. Love this LA!
These are GREAT! I remember paying 5 euros for 50 eyes last year for a halloween party and was wondering if i could not do this myself. Thank you for the lovely tutorial!
I just started blogging and i am currently writing about my halloween party organizations. Would you mind if i put a link to your post if i ever manage to write about recipes for halloween?
You are welcome to link to my post – good luck with your blog and hope you’ll try making your own googly eyes!
Thanks!! These are so expensive at the store. Great tip!!
What an awesome idea! I’m currently taking a cake decorating class and didn’t even think about making my own edible eyes! 🙂
Katie – so easy and so much less expensive and they last a long time!
I get lemon paczki or jelly filled donuts and cover the with black icing piped on with a hair tip (or grass tip), out on googly eyes, and use pipe cleaners for legs and have spiders for Halloween. When you squash a tick you usually see yellow “stuff”. Or use red raspberry filled donuts and cover with tan icing, again pipe cleaners for short legs and the googly eyes and you have ticks. Fun for Halloween.
Sounds fun!
I love this idea. Thank you!
Vanessa, they are so fun to make!
These are so cute! I love googly eyes. I’m going to have to try these and take some googly eye treats to work. Everyone will know who they’re from bc I’ve been known to googly eye my co-workers’ things!
Andrea, I tend have a little too much with googly eyes too!!
I am currently working on a demonstration speech for my class and I have chosen to demonstrate how to decorate Halloween cupcakes and these googly eyes are perfect! I’ll be making them tomorrow morning and I can’t wait to see how they turn out, thank you for sharing this awesome idea!!
Good lucky with your presentation – sounds so fun!
Thank you so much for the idea and the recipe. If you make the little black dots, and let them dry a bit first, you could then pipe out the whites, and embed the pupils into the eye, so it would be flatter. You could even make colored irises by piping out some colored icing in between the black and white. Can’t wait to have fun with this and see what else I can make by piping out royal icing.
Great idea!!
I just made these using cocoa powder instead of black colouring, mainly because I didn’t have any to hand, but it might be a good option for people wanting to avoid colours too.
At a glance you don’t notice that the pupils are black not brown.
Looking forward to making some googly eye monster biscuits this week…
Love the idea of using cocoa powder. Will definitely try it next time. Googly eye monster biscuits sound so fun!