Did you know the blue crab population in the Chesapeake Bay is at its highest level since 1993?

Did you know blue crabs are blue when they’re alive but turn reddish when you cook them?

Did you know that even though my astrological sign is Cancer and I live in Maryland, I will die if I eat crab meat?

Did you know the human head weighs 8 pounds?

OK, so that last one was unrelated.

Today I wanted to share these blue crab cookies. I made them a while back for a wedding shower my neighbor was attending. I don’t have any photos of the cookie-baking process, but I do have some of the decorating part.

I originally planned to make them all the same, but after I outlined all the crabs and filled in about half… I ran out of frosting. It actually worked out well, though, because while the first batch was brighter than I intended, the second batch was significantly lighter.

This was the first time I used this cookie cutter, so I didn’t realize how the shape would look filled in. I think that next time, especially if I’m  not putting a large monogram on it like these, I will do little legs on the side part under the claws.

Still, they turned out pretty cute. And almost everyone could tell that they were crabs.

For these cookies, I used my normal sugar cookie recipe, then used this recipe for royal icing to outline them. I thinned out that icing to fill in the outlines, then had to make another batch of frosting for the royal icing for monogramming and remaining flooding.