How to Decorate Simple T-Rex Dinosaur Cookies

Today I want to share with you how to decorate simple T-Rex Dinosaur Cookies!

I’ll be the first to admit that I am not a cookie expert and it’s taken me a couple of years to feel confident enough with them to take regular orders.

But because I don’t feel like I’ve mastered cookie decorating, when I get requests for them, I have to find ways to simplify them, yet keep them cute and appealing!

Today I’ll share some of my methods!

Here’s what you’ll need:

• Dinosaur Cookies (I used a T-rex cutter from this Wilton set)
• Royal Icing in three colors… I used blue, green and black. *My recipe is done with meringue powder and you can find it here. Louise’s recipe is made with real egg whites and you can find it here.*
• Gel Colors
• Piping Bags
• #1 and #3 icing tips
• Boo-Boo Stick (or toothpicks)
• Food Marker (optional)

For this tutorial, I assume that you already have the cookies baked and cooled. I listed the cutter that I used above, but you could use this tutorial for any shape dinosaur – making small adjustments for different shapes.

If you don’t already have a good recipe for this type of cookie, my favorite roll-out sugar cookie recipe is here.

In this recipe, I’m going to refer to stiff icing and flood icing. You can read more about this here and here.  Also, I used a #3 round tip for all borders and flooding on these cookies.   You could go a little smaller or bigger, but #3 is perfect for me!

So, are we ready?

Step 1:  Using stiff icing, the first thing you’re going to do is outline the t-rex’s belly. I made a simple oval shape with stiff icing. I generally work with 6-8 cookies at a time.

I piped the belly outlines on my first 6-8 cookies, then I went back to the first one and started flooding  them. The outline icing only needs a few minutes to set up a little bit and it’ll be ready to hold the flood icing.

Step 2: Fill in the belly with flood icing – being careful not to overfill it! You don’t want the icing to spill over the edges – sometimes it takes a few minute for this to happen!

Step 3:  Outline the rest of the body of the dinosaur with green stiff icing. I like to start at a endpoint if possible – or a corner where there would be a natural ending place.

Step 4: Again, working in groups of 6-8 cookies, after I had them all outlined, I went back to the first one and begin to flood them.

Don’t worry about getting in all the small spaces or if bubbles appear – we’ll fix that in a minute. Just be sure to flood with enough icing to spread it out and fill in the edges.

Step 5: While the flood icing is still wet, use a toothpick or my favorite cookie tool, a Boo-Boo Stick, to spread out the frosting and pop any bubbles.

Note – here’s a full picture of the Boo-Boo Stick (which can only be purchased at Karen’s Cookies as far as I know)…

The flat end is perfect for spreading icing into small spaces – the pointed end is perfect for popping any air bubbles!

Step 6: To add the blue spots – there are two options – smooth or raised.

I wanted my spots to be smooth, so I immediately went back and started adding them while the green flood icing was still wet. The wet on wet allows them to settle and be smooth with the green.

Those above are still settling but they will end up flat and smooth with the green. But if you wanted them raised, you could wait and pipe them after the green icing had dried for 15-20 minutes. You can see the difference below:

That’s pretty cool, huh?  I think either way it looks very neat!

Step 7: At this point, you want to let the cookies dry for at least a couple of hours (maybe even with a fan blowing on them). I let them dry overnight.

You just want to be able to pipe on the eyes, nose and mouth without the black bleeding into the green. For those, I used a tiny #1 piping tip. I also went back and added claws on the feet using the blue stiff icing.

Alternatively, you could also draw them on with a black food marker. The next day, I did some both ways and the marker is easier, but if you don’t have one, the icing works! The above photo is icing. The one below is a marker…

If you use icing, you’ll want to let that dry another couple of hours (or overnight if you can) before boxing or packaging them up!

And that’s it – only a few steps and you can have some super cute, yet simple T-Rex Dinosaur Cookies! If you’re just learning to do cookies, start with simple designs (like this) and get comfortable with cookie techniques and before you know it, you’ll be moving on to fancier and more details cookies!

Happy Caking!

Rose