How to Decorate 3 Fun Christmas in July Cookies

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We all know that decorated Christmas sugar cookies are extremely popular during Christmas. But, we can’t forget about Christmas in July cookies! To create these decorated cut out cookies, I’ve flipped some of my cookie cutters that I used during the 25 Days of Christmas Cookie Tutorials to make them summer ready!

These cookies are perfect for a Hawaiian Christmas party theme as well. Santa is ready to swim with his pool float reindeer and hibiscus board shorts.

Follow along for the step-by-step video tutorial for decorating these cookies as well as a video tutorial!

*This post may contain affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission, at no extra cost to you, if you make a purchase through a link. Please see my full disclosure for further information.*

Part 1: Gathering your Supplies for the Christmas in July Cookies

To create these Hawaiian Christmas sugar cookies, you will want to gather:

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

  1. Roll, cut out, and bake your sugar cookies according to the recipe. If you are doing cookie cutter flips like me, you can see my process here.
    Cut the legs off of the reindeer cookie before baking.
    Reindeer pool floatie ready!
    This was the original shape of my Santa cookie.
    I’ve flipped Santa upside down and am going to use the hat for his beard. I’ve also cut off his ears.
    I don’t own a board short cookie cutter so I just cut some out from my baby jumper cookie cutter.
  2. Make your buttercream icing and separate it into five bowls (four if your Santa cookies will have the same skin tone as the reindeer). You won’t need much black frosting, as that is just used from some details on the reindeer pool float and Santa’s face. Divvy up the other bowls as equal to each other as you can. 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.
  3. Set up your icing bags as follows: Place the skin tone frosting color (or half of it if you are using the same shade as the reindeer) into an icing bag with the tip #10 in it. Then, place each of the remaining 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 Christmas in July Buttercream Cookies

Check out the video here to see how to make Hawaiian Christmas/Christmas in July sugar cookies. Then, check out the step-by-step photo series tutorials for each decorated cookie below.

 

How to Decorate Santa’s Board Short Cookies

decorated board short cookies with buttercream frosting

  1. Attach the tip #3 to the bag of red icing and outline/fill in the cookie.
  2. Attach the tip #2 to the white bag of frosting and draw hibiscus flowers. Then, draw the drawstring bow.

How to Decorate the Rudolph Reindeer Pool Floatie Cookie

reindeer pool float cookie

  1. Attach the tip #3 to the dark brown frosting and outline the outside shape of the reindeer and then draw an oval in the body to represent the floatie. Remember, if you just used the tip #3 for the red icing, remove/rinse/dry it before attaching it to the brown icing bag. When outlining the reindeer, I left part of the tail without icing so put white icing there later. Fill in the reindeer with the same icing.
  2. Attach the tip #2 to the white frosting and fill in the bottom of the tail. Then, remove/rinse/dry the tip from the white frosting and attach it to the black. Draw the deer’s antlers and a curved line for the eye.
  3. Remove/rinse/dry the tip #3 from the dark brown frosting and attach it to the red. Squeeze out a dot at the tip of the nose for a Rudolph reindeer pool floatie.
    I felt like the pool float was a bit skinny so I decided to erase some frosting and redo it. I thought it would be a good opportunity to show you how easy it is to erase buttercream frosting!
    reindeer pool floatie cookie
    Much better!

How to Decorate the Hawaiian Santa Cookie

christmas in july cookies santa with sunglasses

  1. Use the icing bag with the tip #10 attached to squeeze out frosting for Santa’s face. When using this large of a tip, it’s important to hold the tip close to the cookie so that when you squeeze out the frosting, it has a flat top as opposed to round logs of frosting. Place the cookie into the freezer for about 10 minutes. For more information on this, check out my post here, How to Smooth Buttercream for Cookies.
  2. Smooth Santa’s face with the angled flat spatula. Then, attach the tip #16 to the white bag of icing and squeeze out frosting for Santa’s beard just underneath his face, not on it yet. What you want to do is level the frosting so the beard and face are at the same height.
  3. Then, go over the beard again, this time creating swirls and drawing over the face a bit. Outline the mustache as well.
  4. Fill in the mustache and draw two lines for Santa’s eyebrows.
  5. Attach the tip #2 to the black frosting and outline and fill in his sunglasses. I like to fill in glasses at an angle as opposed to horizontal lines. Outline his mouth with the black frosting. Then, use the frosting with the tip #10 in it to squeeze out a dot for the nose.
  6. Use the red frosting with tip #3 attached to outline the edges of the sunglasses and draw in Santa’s tongue.

Aren’t these so Christmas in July cookies so fun? Let me know in the comments below if you celebrate Christmas in the summer!

Do you need to package these Christmas in July cookies to make party favors? Check out my post here, How to Package Buttercream Sugar Cookies.

Save the Tutorial for Decorating Hawaiian Christmas Cookies

I hope you were inspired to create your own Hawaiian Christmas/Christmas in July sugar cookies with this tutorial! Use the image 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!

decorated Christmas in July cookies with buttercream frosting

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