Ocean Themed Decorated Sugar Cookies

A few weeks back I decided to have some fun after work and make some ocean themed sugar cookies.  I hadn't decorated in a while and missed it...so I picked up some new cookie cutters along with some marine ones I already have and decorated cookies of my other great passion, marine animals and the ocean.  I had so much fun doing this cookies.  Especially the octopus and the whale which I designed myself on a round cookie (I wasn't liking the whale cutters I found and I didn't have an octopus).

I design all the cookies myself and picked the color palette.  I start with drawing most of the designs on paper and figuring out exactly how I want to decorate them. 

Once you start decorating, sometime what you do doesn't translate how you wanted it to, so you have to make some changes.  For instance, I wasn't too happy with the "fin" on the face of this seahorse, while in my drawing I like it. So I changed up the design while decorating.

I also worked through the color palette in my notebook too before decorating to know what colors to make and to pick a set of colors that would look good together and not seem too busy.  An example here was original the fish were purple and blue, but then I saw another opportunity to bring red into the set other than just the lobster.  So I made the red, yellow, and blue fish, and I think he wound up being my favourite.

It's fun to play around with different designs and new techniques.  For the jellyfish on the top left, I did a new blending technique between the two blues that I love the effect.

The whales and the ocotopi were my favourite.  If you are freehand designing a cookie, you can either draw the design on with food markers first, or scratch in into the cookie with a toothpick (either before baking or after it's cooled).

The octopi I actually made different each time.  Sometimes I like drawing it directly with the icing to have a more organic flow.  Here each tentacle I piped just how it felt naturally.  The placement is all similar, but this way each cookie is unique and they don't feel as staged or planned which is sometimes more interesting than perfectly identical.

For individual cookie photos and more detail photos make sure to check out my Ocean Cookie Flickr Set.

If anyone would like a tutorial on any of these let me know!  If I have some free time maybe I'll do another video.  Otherwise I can definitely give you step by step instructions or even an illustrated tutorial.

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