Sea Creature Cookies: How to Make Underwater Animal Cookies

Whether you’re throwing an underwater themed party or just want to make some sea creature cookies as a fun activity, I’ve compiled a list of some of my favorite underwater animal cookie tutorials, including how to make seahorse cookies, how to make octopus cookies, how to make clownfish cookies and more!

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These sea creature cookies are:

really cute with vibrant colors
fun to give out at ocean themed birthday parties
easy enough to make for beginners to royal icing
delicious with a vanilla-infused sugar cookie cut-out base

Must-Have Baking Tools (seriously)

Silicone baking mats – I use this brand and my cookies slide right off without burning!
a cookie scoop – get this one. It makes the perfect rounded cookies every time!
silicone spatula – try this set. It’s the best way to get the most out of your dough and batters
rolling pin guides – I use this one. Genius way to roll your dough out evenly!

What You’ll Need to Make Decorated Sea Animal Cookies

The list of ingredients to make sea creature cookies depends on which ones you’re making, so refer to each individual tutorial for the full list, however the basics you should have on hand include:

food coloring to make different icing colors depending on your preferences – gel food coloring is much better than liquid
black or silver “edible pearls” for the eyes – I like these ones
piping bags – this is the best brand
a scribe or toothpick – find them here
underwater themed cookie cutters – this is a good collection

What Sugar Cookie Base Do I Use?

I recommend this really delicious vanilla cookie base recipe which makes for great cut-out cookies as it doesn’t spread if you follow the instructions and make sure to refrigerate the dough for long enough.

Tips for Using Royal Icing

These underwater themed animal cookies are all made with royal icing, which can be a new skill for bakers to learn.

Once you get the hang of it, it’s super easy and fun, but make sure to read the royal icing recipe for information on how to make it.

These underwater creatures were all iced with 10-12 second icing, which means that if you drag a knife through your icing, it will take 10-12 seconds before the line completely disappears.

When using royal icing, start with less is more and go slowly as you fill in the cookie. If you don’t add enough, you can add more until you’re happy, but if you go full out at first and completely blast the cookie with icing, you might find that it falls off the cookie as it settles.

I prefer to use piping bags with no tips, which means that I need no other materials besides the piping bags and a pair of scissors to cut the end off.

When you pipe the royal icing onto the cookie, particularly if you are doing the outline, you don’t want to have the tip right next to the cookie.

Instead, hold it about an inch off the cookie and let the icing “fall” down as you guide it into place.

This creates a smoother line.

Must-Have Decorating Tools

Piping bags – I use and love these ones
Gel food coloring – much better than liquid food coloring
Meringue powder – I use this kind for my royal icing
Scribe – for awesome detail and clean up

How to Make Seahorse Cookies

Seahorse cookies are super fun as you can go crazy with the colors and designs and really customize them.

The ones I’ve created in this seahorse cookie tutorial are fun and whimsical with bright colors, but you could also do ones that are a bit more subdued and more true to life with intricate designs.

The thing to remember about making seahorse cookies is that you’ll want to make sure each section dries before carrying on with the next color.

If you try and pipe colors next to each other that haven’t dried, the icing will “bleed” and you won’t get defined lines.

This can be a bit tedious for these as they have at least three different colors, but you’ll love the results.

Read my seahorse sugar cookie recipe for more information.

How to Make Octopus Cookies

Perhaps my favorite of all of the underwater animal cookies, octopus cookies are really easy to make and a hit for the whole family.

These are made using royal icing eyes, which you’ll want to make beforehand and can read about in the recipe, but the most important step with these is to use the “wet on wet” technique” to create the white patches on the head of the octopus.

When you do “wet on wet,” it means that you pipe the icing base, and then, while it’s still wet, you pipe the details on top of it.

You do this knowing that the icing you’ve put on top of it will actually sink into the main base and become seamless.

You don’t want to do this when you want the detail to be defined, but in this case, we want the white patches to be quite flowy and really a part of the main Octopus body rather than sitting on top.

You can find full instructions on how to make octopus cookies for a super cute underwater animal cookie treat.

How to Make Clownfish Cookies

Having a Nemo themed party?

There’s nothing cuter than some clownfish cookies!

They only use two colors, orange and white icing, and are really fun to make.

These cookies are another that you need to make sure you do in the right order to wait for the icing to dry or it will all run together, but you can find full instructions in my clownfish cookie tutorial so you’ll be a pro at it.

These also use a black pearl for the eye.

Read more on making clownfish cookies here!

How to Make Whale Cookies

Do you speak whale?

Even if you don’t, making these whale cookies will help you have a whale of a time…sorry!

I love these because they are incredibly simple to make and come out great with just a few icing colors.

I went with a grey and turquoise pairing for these, and they only require one base layer and then a bit of detail on top so you don’t have to spend ages waiting for things to dry.

Find the full whale cookie recipe here to start making your own.