Make these easy Shark Cookies to celebrate Shark Week this year or for your shark-obsessed kiddo’s next birthday party!
These soft sugar cookies are delicious, simple to make, and easily decorated with rich buttercream frosting and gummy shark candies.
Is it Shark Week? Are you gearing up to spend hours on the couch watching Discovery Channel shark documentaries? Are you hosting a shark party?
If any of those things are true, you need to make these easy Shark Cookies!
Make a batch of my buttercream frosting for cookies, and tint it so that it’s the color of the ocean. Then swirl it over these easy sugar cookies and top each one with a chewy gummy shark.
Decorated shark sugar cookies don’t need to be fancy and intricate to be super fun! This easy version is just as delicious as any cut-out cookie and way easier to decorate!
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Why You Will Love This Recipe
- Delicious Homemade Sugar Cookies. You can feel free to make shark cookies with pre-made sugar cookie dough, but if you’re here, I’ll bet you’re looking for an easy homemade recipe instead, so I’m going to give you just that! This recipe uses simple, easy-to-find ingredients to make buttery, vanilla sugar cookies that everyone will love.
- The Best Sugar Cookie Frosting. Buttercream is my favorite on sugar cookies! I’ll show you how to use two different colors to make a beautiful ombre blue/green on each one.
- Super Easy Shark Decorations! Look for Shark Gummies at your favorite candy store (there’s one near me that has all the different-shaped gummy candies, or look for a Sugar Rush or Dylan’s Candy Bar shop), or pick up a package on Amazon.
Key Ingredients
Complete list of ingredients with quantities and instructions is located in the recipe card below
- Flour, Baking Soda, Baking Powder, and Salt (the dry ingredients)
- Softened Butter, Sugar, 1 egg plus 1 egg yolk, and Vanilla Extract (the wet ingredients)
- For the Frosting: Unsalted Butter, Powdered Sugar, Vanilla, and salt
- Gel Food Coloring: To get the perfect blue-green color we’ll use a few drops each of blue and teal. The set linked here has all of the colors you need to make tons of fun colors!
- Gummy Sharks: You need 24 of them, one for each cookie.
How To Make Easy Shark Cookies
- Get Started: Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C, and line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a Silpat baking mat. Then, in a medium mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
- Mix the Wet Ingredients: In a separate large mixing bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, using an electric mixer. Add an egg, one egg yolk, and vanilla extract, and beat again until combined.
- Combine: Add the dry mixture to the wet mixture, a little at a time, mixing after each addition.
- Bake: Use a 1.5-inch cookie scoop to drop dough onto the prepared baking sheet, 2 inches apart. Bake for 9-11 minutes, or until the edges of the cookies are lightly golden brown. Allow the cookies to cool completely on a wire rack before frosting.
- Make the Buttercream Frosting: In a large bowl, beat the butter at medium speed for 1 minute or until creamy. Decrease the speed to low and gradually add the powdered sugar, vanilla, and salt. Beat for about 3 minutes or until well mixed and fluffy. Add milk or cream if needed to thin the frosting to a piping consistency. Divide the frosting in half, and use food coloring to tint half of the frosting blue, and the other half teal green.
- Set Up Piping Bag: This is a double-bagged frosting technique that will give you a two-tone buttercream swirl! Lay out two pieces of plastic wrap. Add blue frosting to one and teal frosting to the other. Roll each into a tube, twisting both ends to seal. Then, snip one end off of each tube, and add both colors to a large piping bag fitted with a star tip (I used Wilton 4B), with the cut ends near the tip.
- Frost Cookies: Gently squeeze the piping bag so that both colors come out together. Add a swirl of frosting to each cooled cookie, and top with a fun gummy shark.
Top Tips
- Use room temperature ingredients. It’s important that the butter is soft for both the cookie dough and the frosting. Room-temperature eggs are also suggested, as they mix into the dough much better than cold ones.
- If the dough becomes too thick for your beaters, switch to mixing in the remaining flour by hand, or using a sturdy spoon or spatula.
- There’s no need to chill this dough. It will spread as it bakes, which is what you want. If your kitchen is particularly hot though, you may want to chill the dough briefly before baking.
- Don’t go too heavy with the food coloring. You want this ocean-hued frosting to be pastel.
- Using two colors of frosting in one piping bag is super fun, and gives you a swirled effect that looks much more difficult than it actually is!
How to Store Sugar Cookies with Buttercream
Store shark cookies in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 days.
If you’d like to freeze these cookies, I’d suggest freezing them without the frosting. They’ll keep in the freezer for up to 3 months. Thaw and frost as desired when you need them for your shark week festivities!
Other Fun Cookie Recipes You Should Try
You’ll love all of our easy drop cookie recipes! These are a few of our faves:
- Soft Frosted Circus Animal Cookies
- Red Velvet Thumbprints
- Caramel Bear Bar Cookies
- Watergate Cookies
- S’mores Cookies
- BBQ Grill Cookies
FAQs
Keep looking! They are always available online, and they won’t really be shark cookies without sharks on top! If you find mini shark gummies, you can call these baby shark cookies too. You can also skip the gummies and add blue sprinkles to these cookies instead.
Follow this recipe if you want the easiest way to decorate shark cookies. Two-toned buttercream frosting and gummy sharks make simple work of decorating these soft sugar cookies.
You can choose to spread the frosting on the cookies using a knife or a small spatula. Use two colors and blend them together, or just stick with one color to make things easy.
These easy Shark Cookies are going to be so perfect for your Shark Week festivities, Shark Week viewing party, or that birthday party for your shark-loving kid! Shark week happens in July, so be sure to save this recipe if you need to!
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