Delicious Beach Party Cupcakes with Cute Teddy Bear Grahams
These beach party cupcakes are perfect for a beach-themed birthday party or class celebration. They look like you’ve spent hours upon hours tediously making them, but they are actually quite quick and easy to put together.
Beach Party Cupcakes Ingredients:
- 1 box yellow cake mix + additional ingredients per directions OR your favorite cupcake recipe.
- Short on time tip: Make the cupcakes from a box, but make the (easy) buttercream frosting from scratch and no one will know you used a box!
- White buttercream frosting in a piping bag with small cut tip for base coat
- Blue Food Coloring
- Piping bag with a Wilton 70 tip for “waves”
- Coarse Brown Sugar for “sand’
- Blue Sprinkles
- White Pearl Sprinkles
- Ocean Animal Sugar Decorations
- Can’t find any at you local shop? You can also make your own using white chocolate and these sea creature candy molds.
- Swedish Fish and other sea themed gummies like these also work well.
- Sour Strip Candy (Or a cut-up fruit roll or fruit strip)
- Teddy Grahams
- Paper Decorative Umbrellas
Teddy Graham Beach Cupcake Instructions:
Mix together and bake the cupcake batter following the box recipe. Cool completely before doing the next step. While cooling, this would be a great time to make your buttercream frosting. It take me less than ten minutes in my KitchenAid mixer. (And speaking of the beach, I LOVE this aqua mixer!)
Once the buttercream is ready, put about a third aside into a separate bowl and add the blue food coloring. Stir drops in gradually until you’ve reached your preferred color of blue. You can also combine blue and green food coloring if you’re going for more of a teal water look.
For it to look more like waves, slowly stir in some white frosting. Important: You don’t want this to be completely mixed in. You’ll want ribbons of white to show. Then add this mixture into your piping bag with #70 tip. When it’s time to use, it will create a cool blue color with white streaks that look like waves breaking.
Add Frosting to the Top of the Beach Party Cupcakes
Once your blue buttercream is ready, it’s time to focus on just the white frosting again. If your cupcakes are cool, it’s time to add this yummy frosting to the top of the cupcakes.
Use white buttercream to pipe a flat swirl base coat on each cupcake.
Now take out that coarse brown sugar (if you’re having trouble finding coarse sugar, the Sugar in the Raw packets also work great!).
Coat half of the cupcake with sugar sand.
You can do this on half of it so you can add the blue frosting to create water next to the sand. To do this, add
The finished product with half sand, half water on the cupcake:
You can also sprinkle the brown sugar sand all across the cupcake for some sandy scenes.
If adding water use the blue & white buttercream mix to pipe ribbons using the #70 tip across a portion of the cupcake surface.
You can also add the blue & white buttercream frosting to the whole cupcake to create an entire water look for the cupcake. This is fun to do if you want to make it look like the teddy grahams are floating on a raft or playing in the water, as these pics show:
Add Sprinkles and Beach Themed Candies to the Cupcakes
Now back to the party cupcake steps! After you add the frosting, sprinkle some blue sugar sand and pearls over the water. The balls are optional, but I think it gives them a fun wave cresting look.
Add sour candy strips for towels and rafts with a Teddy Graham bear on top. Have fun playing around with the ingredients and making different scenes!
You can also add gumballs for beach balls, seashell and sand dollar candy decorations, and paper umbrellas where desired.
Be creative and make these beach-themed cupcakes perfect for your specific beach party! Whether it’s a kids party, back to school party, or spring break get together, these cupcakes are sure to be a hit.
Need a fun place in the PNW for a beach party? Check out our list of the best beaches in Seattle.