How to Decorate Dinosaur Cookies with Buttercream Frosting
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Today I have a fun and colorful tutorial for decorating dinosaur cookies! These buttercream cookies are perfect for dinosaur baby showers or dinosaur birthday parties.
Included in the cookie decorating tutorial are brontosaurus cookies, t rex cookies, triceratops cookies, and pterodactyl cookies.
Have fun picking your own color palette for these ones, as they can easily be for both girl or boy party themes.
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Part 1: Gathering your Supplies for the Buttercream Dinosaur Cookies
To create these dinosaur sugar cookies, you will want to gather:
- 6 Icing bags
- 6 Couplers
- One Wilton tip #2 and one tip #4 – buy these individually at a craft store or purchase this kit that I use
- Dinosaur cookie cutters
- Buttercream frosting in black, white, and four of your preferred colors – find my crusting buttercream icing recipe here
- No spread sugar cookie dough – find my no spread sugar cookies recipe here
You may be asking, “What are couplers?” Couplers allow you to change your tips on your icing bags. Check out my page, Getting Started: Learn How to Decorate Buttercream Cookies, to learn how to do this. Essentially, you will attach a coupler to each icing bag. When you need to attach a tip, just make sure to rinse out the previous color from the tip with hot water. Purchasing a set of couplers is pretty affordable on Amazon: 4 Count Wilton Coupler Set.
Part 2: Baking the Cookies and Setting up Your Icing Bags
- Roll, cut out, and bake your sugar cookies according to the recipe. I like to do 3 of each dinosaur cookie for a total of 12 cookies.
- Make your buttercream icing and separate it into six bowls. Two of the bowls do not need much icing at all, these will be the black and white icing colors. The black is only used for the dinosaur’s eyes and the white is for a few details on each cookie. Divvy up the four other bowls as equal to each other as you can. Pick your four dinosaur shades and mix those colors. Remember that the color will deepen as it sets. I prefer to use the Wilton gel food dye since gel is more vibrant (i.e. more cost effective because you use less) than liquid and doesn’t change the consistency of your frosting.
- Set up your icing bags as follows: Place each of your frosting colors into their own icing bags set up with couplers. If you don’t know how to do this, just hop over to my Getting Started: Learn How to Decorate Buttercream Cookies page. You don’t need to attach any tips to the bags yet.
Part 3: The Tutorial for Decorating Dinosaur Cookies with Buttercream
Check out the video here to see how to make dinosaur cookies using buttercream frosting. Then, check out the step-by-step photo series tutorials for each dinosaur below.
How to Decorate the Brontosaurus Cookies
- First, does anyone else think of Littlefoot when they see brontosaurus dinosaurs? Where are my 90’s babies at? Anyway, back to the tutorial, attach tip #4 to your preferred icing bag. Outline and fill in the whole brontosaurus cookie.
- Attach the tip #2 to the black frosting and squeeze out a dot for the eye. I made my eyes larger than a “2” sized tip would be by just holding the icing bag still for a bit while squeezing out frosting. Make sure to do this step on all of your brontosaurus cookies before going to step 3.
- Remove/rinse/dry the tip #2 from the black frosting and attach it to the white frosting. Squeeze out a small dot for a reflection in the eye. While this isn’t necessary, I like the character it gives each dinosaur. Then, squeeze out dots on each foot and some oval dots onto the brontosaurus’ back.
How to Decorate the Triceratops Cookies
- For our Cera cookies, okay just kidding, our triceratops cookies, attach tip #4 to your preferred icing color. Remember to remove/rinse/dry the tip from the color you used for the brontosaurus cookies. Outline and fill in the whole cookie except for a spot for the horn.
- Attach tip #2 to the white frosting and fill in the horn area. Then, redraw the horn so that it extends into the triceratops a bit. Add some dots on the feet as well.
- Use the colored frosting with the tip #4 attached to draw the “3 horns” on the triceratops head. I just did a curved line but you can get fancy with adding points to represent horns. You can see that I drew over part of the cookie outline and extended it out so that the whole horn area was the same height. 4. Once you’ve completed steps 2 & 3 on all of your triceratops cookies, remove/rinse/dry the tip #2 from the white frosting and add it to the black. Squeeze out a dot for the eye. Do that for all of the triceratops cookies. Then, remove/rinse/dry the tip #2 and place it back onto the white frosting if you want to add a nice reflective spot to the eye. Again, I like the added character this gives the dinosaur cookies.
4. Once you’ve completed steps 2 & 3 on all of your triceratops cookies, remove/rinse/dry the tip #2 from the white frosting and add it to the black. Squeeze out a dot for the eye. Do that for all of the triceratops cookies. Then, remove/rinse/dry the tip #2 and place it back onto the white frosting if you want to add a nice reflective spot to the eye. Again, I like the added character this gives the dinosaur cookies. 
How to Decorate the T Rex Cookies
- Outline and fill in the whole cookie using a tip #4 with your preferred shade of frosting. A tip when filling in irregular shapes is to work in small sections instead of trying to fill in the cookie all in one go. In the photo below these were 3 different sections of linework.
- Attach the tip #2 to the black frosting if it isn’t already attached and squeeze out a dot for the eye. Do this step for all of your t rex cookies. Then, remove/rinse/dry the tip #2 and attach it to the white frosting. Add the reflection in the eye, the teeth, and the sharp claws. To achieve the teeth, just make zig-zag lines. To achieve the claws, squeeze out a dot and then pull the frosting away from the cookie until it comes to a point.
How to Decorate the Pterodactyl Cookies
- Use the tip #4 on your preferred icing color and outline/fill in the whole cookie.
- Re-outline part of the pterodactyl wings and draw in two lines coming off of the tip of the wing. Do this for both wings. Then, attach tip #2 to the black icing bag and squeeze out an eye.
- Once you’ve completed step 2 on all of you pterodactyl cookies, remove/rinse/dry the tip #2 and add it to the white frosting. Add in the reflective dot on the eye and then create 3 claws on the bottom of each foot. Use the same method for the claws as you did the t rex cookies.
Aren’t these dinosaur cookies so fun? I love how colorful they are and how you can customize them to fit any dinosaur birthday party or baby shower color scheme. Here are the same cookies done in red, blue, orange, and green: 
Do you need to package your cookies to make dinosaur party favors? Check out my post here, How to Package Buttercream Sugar Cookies.
Part 4: Decorating the Dinosaur Birthday Party
It’s so fun to decorate a dinosaur birthday party. Grab some balloons, streamers, tabletop confetti, and a backdrop and you’re good to go!
Save the Tutorial for Decorating Dinosaur Cookies
I hope you were inspired to create your own dinosaur birthday cookies or baby shower cookies with this tutorial! Use one of the images below to pin the tutorial to your Pinterest account for later. Alternatively, use the social share icons at the top of the page. Thanks for sharing!
If you’ve ever had a dinosaur themed party, I’d love to know in the comments below! As always, thank you for reading and being a part of the Buttercream Parties family. Make sure to check back every Friday for a new cookie decorating tutorial – always with tasty buttercream!
