How to Decorate Pink Elephant Baby Shower Cookies

I post a lot of tutorials for baby showers. But to be fair, decorated sugar cookies appear to be the norm at baby showers these days. I’m not fighting that!

For today’s tutorial, I want to show you how to decorate pink elephant baby shower cookies. These decorated cookies are the perfect baby shower favor. Or, use them as a baby shower decoration. The party guests will likely tell you they are “too pretty to eat” so might as well include them in the table decor! They will still be beyond tasty, don’t worry.

Follow along for the full step-by-step photo series tutorial. I’ve also included a video for all three cookie designs.

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Part 1: Gathering your Supplies for the Pink Elephant Baby Shower Cookies

To create these elephant cookies, you will want to gather:

• 5 Icing bags
• 5 Couplers
• 9″ flat spatula
• One Wilton tip #2, #4, and #102 – buy these individually at a craft store or purchase this kit that I use all the time if you become addicted to decorating cookies like me
• Elephant baby shower cookie cutters
• Buttercream frosting in black, white, gray, light pink, and dark pink – 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

1. Roll, cut out, and bake your sugar cookies according to the recipe. You should easily be able to cut out four of each shape, creating a dozen cookies.
2. Make your buttercream icing and separate it into five bowls. You won’t need much black frosting at all so adjust accordingly. Mix up your black, gray, light & dark pink frosting shades. 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 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: How to Decorate Sugar Cookies for Pink Elephant Baby Shower Favors

Check out the video tutorial for all three of these designs first. Then, go ahead and check out the step-by-step photo series tutorials for each cookie.

 

How to Decorate Baby Stroller Cookies

1. Attach the Wilton tip #4 to the black frosting and pipe out two circles for the wheels. Then, pipe the inner lines. It’s best to not pipe over the center of the wheel each time you draw a line. If you do, the center will be very thick and messy.
2. Once you have completed step 1 for all of your stroller cookies, remove/rinse/dry the tip #4 from the black frosting and attach it to the white. Outline and fill in the stroller carriage.
3. Do step 2 on all of your stroller cookies before doing this next step. Remove/rinse/dry the tip #4 from the white icing and attach it to the gray icing bag. Outline and fill in the stroller handles on all of your stroller cookies.
4. Once you’ve completed the previous step on all of the stroller cookies, remove/rinse/dry the tip and attach it to the light pink frosting. Outline and fill in the stroller shade protector.
5. Use the same frosting and tip size to re-outline the stroller shade protector but, this time, add in the curved lines as well.
6. Attach the tip #102 to the dark pink frosting bag and pipe ruffles around the top of the carriage. To do this, move the frosting bag up & down quickly as you move the frosting from left to right. Or right to left if you are left handed.

How to Decorate Pink Elephant Onesie Cookies

1. The first step will be to outline and fill in the entire onesie. You can do this in either of the pink colors. You can see in the photo above how I’ve done both shades of pink. For this step, use the Wilton tip #4.
2. Next, smooth out the buttercream on the entire onesie cookie. I use what I call the “freezer method” to do this. You can check out the video above to see what I did! If you aren’t able to use that method, find the link to my tips near the bottom of the page.
3. Remove/rinse/dry the tip #4 from the pink frosting and attach it to the gray frosting. To create the elephants, I promise you do not need to be an artist. First, pipe out two dots. These will be the elephant’s legs.
4. Next, draw the head and body of the elephant and fill it in. To get a smoother look for such small line work, use the tip of the icing bag to smooth out the frosting in up & down motions. Again, check the video above for how I did this. Don’t worry about the trunk yet.
5. For the elephant’s trunk, use the same Wilton tip #4 and pipe out a line that is thicker near the head and thinner at the end of the trunk. All you need to do is squeeze less as you get closer to the end of the trunk.
6. Now all that’s left is to outline the edge of the elephant onesie cookie and fill in the details. Again, you can use either shade of pink frosting for this. Just make sure to remove/rinse/dry the tip #4 from the gray frosting before adding it to the pink shade of your choice.

How to Decorate Elephant Cookies

1. First, attach tip #4 to the gray frosting and outline/fill in the shape of the elephant cookie. Then, use the same smoothing technique that you used for the baby onesie cookies.
2. Outline the edge of the elephant cookie again with the same tip size.
3. Attach tip #2 to the black frosting and draw the elephant’s eye. I always like to add eyelashes for extra girly-ness, but you can skip those if you’d like.
4. Remove/rinse/dry the tip #4 from the gray frosting and attach it to the light pink frosting. To draw the elephant’s ear, draw a sideways, uneven heart. Then, fill it in.
5. The last step is to pipe out dots or short lines for the elephant’s feet and nostrils. Use the same pink frosting with tip #4 still attached.

Wouldn’t these decorated sugar cookies be the perfect pink elephant baby shower favors? All you would need to do is package them up in 4″ x 6″ self-sealing bags like this and set them out on table near the door!

For tips on how to best package buttercream cookies, check out my post here, How to Package Buttercream Sugar Cookies.

Check Out My Tips for How to Smooth Buttercream For Cookies

I have a whole dedicated post for my favorite ways to smooth buttercream icing. I also explain why I might choose one way over another, given time and the details of the cookie design. You can check that out here: How to Smooth Buttercream Icing.

Save the Tutorial for How to Decorate Elephant Cookies

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