Hello to all my favorite bakers and decorators out there! Are you all still sane, healthy, and in one piece? I’m still committed to pretending that spring is already over and we’re having the summer of our lives. As the quarantine drags on, outside recreation has never been more popular! Last week, I showed you how to make fun beach sugar cookies. But what is a beach without some fun little friends like starfish and shells to really enhance the experience? Our beach day continues!
Starfish and shells are some of the easiest things that you can make. They don’t take a huge amount of technical skill and they need minimal tools to make them look great. I always make some of them at the same time as my beach sugar cookies because I can use the same colors in both. If you haven’t taken a peek at the beach cookies yet, I encourage you to give them a look and see if you’d like to do the same so that you can have a whole beach themed set for your next fun party- be it a party for one in front of the television or a cookout in the sunshine!
Materials Needed for Shells and Starfish Sugar Cookies
- Sugar cookies, baked and cooled. Find my favorite recipe at the bottom of this post or explained in detail here!
- Royal icing in several colors. My recipe is at the bottom of this post, or visit here if you’re a newbie! I like using Americolor food gels, found here at Amazon.
- Blue- medium consistency. I achieved this color with two drops of ‘sky blue’ and two drops of ‘teal’.
- Light brown- medium consistency.
- White- half at medium consistency and half at piping consistency.
- Shell and Starfish cookie cutters- I used the pair from this Ann Clark set on Amazon.
- Cookie etching needle, found in this simple toolkit on Amazon.
- Assorted #1 and #2 piping tips, plus one small open star tip (I used a #13)
- Counter top fan to speed drying times (optional but recommended)
Are you ready? Let’s accessorize the heck out of this beach.
Begin by baking up your cookies and letting them cool completely on a wire rack. When you’re ready to start decorating, divide the starfish cookies into two equal stacks. Using your blue icing with a #2 tip, completely fill the shape of the first stack. Now use your light brown icing (with another #2 tip) to fill the other half of the starfish shapes. If you have trouble getting pointed legs on your starfish, use the etching needle from your toolkit to gently pull some icing from the middle of the legs toward the tips. Once you’re satisfied with the starfish shapes, set them in front of a counter top fan to dry and harden for about an hour.
While your starfish are hardening, you can begin work on your shells. Use the blue icing- still with a #2 tip- to follow along the bottom of the shell, and then head up the side of the shell about half an inch. Arch your icing across the top of the cookie and back down to the same spot on the other side of the cookie. Fill in the outlined area. Working quickly, use your medium consistency white icing to fill in the upper half of the shape, taking care to keep the small arcs at the top of the shell from running into each other. Fill in this shape as well.
Now it’s time to swirl the colors together. This wet-on-wet technique is very simple- and remember- less is more! If you swirl too much, you’ll muddy the colors and you won’t get the pretty loops and patterns that make these so whimsical. Put your etching needle in the wet blue icing and drag it upwards into the white icing. Only pull the icing up a little ways on the outside edges, but go ahead and really drag the needle almost all the way up to the top by the time you get to the middle of the cookie. While you should pull in an upward direction most of the time, a few pushing the white down into the blue are good too. Once you have your swirls the way you like them, set them in front of the fan to dry.
Your starfish should now be ready for decoration. What I really like about this design is that it’s pretty hard to mess up. If you can make dots, you can make starfish. Grab your white icing at piping consistency and an #1 tip. Begin by making a big dot in the center of your cookie- you want it to be just a little larger than a #2 pencil eraser. Then you’re going to make what would be a pentagon of dots (if you connected them) just a tiny bit smaller than the first by putting one at the base of each of the starfish arms.
Using the large dot at the base of each arm as a starting point, make a trail of dots down the appendage. Make each dot a little smaller than the one before it and ending right at the tip of each arm. Try to arch the line a little so that it looks like more of a natural shape. Repeat this technique on the other four arms.
Shake your hand out if you need to and get ready for the next step. From this point onward, you’re going to be making the smallest dots you can. Pipe enough icing that it looks like a solid dot, but no more than that. Start by putting two tiny dots between each of the large ‘pentagon’ dots for reference and so that you can get a feel for how small the dots should be.
Now move up a line from those two dots and make 3-4 dots reaching from the right side of one arm to the left side of the next arm. Move up another line and make 5-6 dots. Move up and continue to fill in your dots until you reach where the arms separate. Go up the left side making 3, then 2, then 1 dot to fill in that side of the arm. Now do the same on the right side. Rinse and repeat on the next section of starfish. If you have trouble, pause and take a breath. It can be a bit mind (and hand!) numbing to do this but it’s not a step that you need to rush through. Take your time! Once you’ve completed all your starfish, put them back under the fan to harden and go back to the shells.
At first, doing the outline of these shells seems self-explanatory- but stick with me! There’s a hard way to do it and an easy way… and you know I’m all about the easy. Start outlining by using your #1 white piping icing and piping a line across the narrowest point of the cookie- right where the shell meets the foot of the cookie, if you know what I mean. Using that line as a starting point, trace up the side of the cookie and just over the first ridge at the top of the cookie and then stop. Go back to that starting line and pipe a diagonal line up the cookie to meet where you just ended your first line. Continue over the next scalloped ridge and stop again. Continue this pattern 4 more times to outline the entire cookie, bringing the final line all the way down to the starting line.
Now it’s time to make the bottoms of the shells. Starting at about the same point as the second line you made up the cookie, make a loop downward and back up to the same spot. Now make 3 ‘U’ shapes and then a final loop on the opposite end, ending that loop in the same spot as where it started. Finally, swap out the #1 for a small open star tip (I used #13). Pipe around 6 small open stars directly onto the horizontal line at the narrowest point of the cookie. Place all the shells under the fan to harden. You did it, you’re done!
How did your beach embellishments turn out? I think these are so fun to share with others that I don’t even mind making all those starfish dots! It won’t be long before the summer sun makes Quarantine 2020 a distant memory. Make sure to let me know how everything worked out for you in the comments section below, or on my Facebook page! Until next time, stay happy, stay safe, and stay baking!
Foolproof Sugar Cookies
Ingredients
- 3 cups all purpose flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 cup butter
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/2 tsp almond extract
- 1 egg
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350.
- In bowl, mix together 3 cups of the flour and baking power. Set aside.
- In separate bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Add in the extracts and the egg and beat until combined.
- Slowly add the flour mixture to the butter mixture. Dough will be crumbly.
- Press dough together with hands, and roll out on a well-floured surface. Cut shapes and place on a baking sheet covered in parchment paper.
- Refrigerate baking sheet for at least 10 minutes.
- Bake for 9-11 minutes, remove when cookie edges are just barely golden. Allow several minutes to cool on sheet before moving cookies to a rack.
Royal Icing
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup water
- 3 Tbsp meringue powder
- 4 cups confectioner's (powdered) sugar sifted
- 1/2 tsp Karo syrup (optional)
- 1/8 tsp clear flavored extract (optional)
Instructions
- Combine water and meringue powder in a bowl and beat with mixer until frothy.
- Sift powdered sugar into the same bowl and mix to combine
- Add syrup and extract if desired
- Beat the icing for 4-5 minutes until it is glossy and holds a peak if the beater is turned upside down
Medium Consistency
- Continue to add water ½ Tbsp at a time until at desired consistency (icing should disappear into itself in about 5 seconds after being dripped back into the mixing bowl).
Flooding Consistency
- Continue to add water ½ Tbsp at a time until at desired consistency (icing should disappear into itself in about 3 seconds after being dripped back into the mixing bowl).
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