Beachy Clam Shell Cupcakes

We live in a beach town, and there is one thing that all the residents have in common.

Their love for the beach!

So it’s totally fitting that we’d make a little cupcake as an ode to the ocean.

These beachy clam shell cupcakes are adorable and just scream “take me to the beach!”

They’d be perfect for a mermaid themed party, an ocean or beach themed party or any summer cook out.

The best part, they are way easier to make than they look.

We’ll even show you step by step how you can make these beach cupcakes your self.

Let’s get started.

Ingredients for Beachy Clam Shell Cupcakes

To make these cupcakes, we started with already made cupcakes. You can use a box recipe or your favorite cake recipe. We made 12, but you could double the ingredients below for a full 24 cupcakes.

12 Made cupcakes (You can use box mix or just make your favorite cake recipe.)
2 cups vanilla frosting
2 cups blue frosting
1 cup pink or purple frosting
1 (11oz) box Nilla Wafers, divided
White and silver sixlets
Fish sprinkles

You will also need:

Large open star frosting tip (Wilton 1M Open Star Piping Tip)
Decorator bags

How to Make Your Clam Shell Beach Cupcakes

First count and remove 24 Nilla Wafer cookies for the box and set aside. *I set aside 2 extra just in case we had a clamshell break during assembly.

Put the remaining Nilla wafers in a ziplock bag and using a rolling pin (a can works great too!) to crush the cookies into a fine powder.

This will be your beach sand. Set to the side.

No place the pink (or purple) frosting into a disposable decorator bag. In a pinch, a freezer bag with the corner cut off would work too.

If you can get your hands on a decorator or piping bags, i highly suggest it. It makes working with the frosting so much easier. You can get them at Walmart or Amazon.

Now pipe a small amount of frosting onto one of your Wafer cookies.

Gently press one of the chocolate pearls into the frosting on the edge and top with another wafer cookie like shown below.

These will be your clams with pearls that will top your beachy cupcakes.

Finish making all 12 of your clam shell cookies and set aside. We used both pink and purple frosting. These colors look amazing with the teals and blues of the water.

Now it’s time to frost your cupcakes! Pipe white frosting over half of each of your cupcakes.

Pour your cookie crumbs into a medium-sized bowl.

Dip the frosted half of your cupcakes into the cookie crumbs to create a sandy beach portion on one half of your cupcakes.

Now place the blue frosting in a decorator or piping bag with the open star tip in place.

Pipe the blue icing across the unfrosted half of the cupcake to create a wavy ripple. This will the waves crashing onto the coast of your beachy cupcakes.

Top the blue icing half with the fish sprinkles.