St. Patrick's Day Cookies

Recently I was thumbing through old magazines my mom gave me and tearing out ideas for future use when I came across a simple idea and wondered why I had not done this before: adding food coloring to the sugar cookie dough before baking. I think this came out of a 2 year old issue of Better Homes & Gardens, but I am not sure anymore. Normally, I get out our ingredients, mix up the dough, roll out our dough, cut out the cookies, wash the blades to the hand mixer and other bowls and utensils while cookies are baking, and then start a whole new mess mixing up a batch of frosting, but this avoids all that extra work (not to mention extra sugar, which face it, nobody in this family really needs). Smart right? Since I had just gotten the shamrock cookie cutter, this seemed like a good time to try it out, using green food coloring, of course.

My little kitchen helper and I used this recipe for cut-out cookies, which is a buttery cookie that is easy to cut out.

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) softened butter
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/4 tsp. salt

1. Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl. Add the egg and vanilla extract and mix.
2. In another bowl, stir the flour mixture, baking powder, and salt together. Gradually add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and blend until smooth.
3. I separated the dough into two balls since we were planning to make neon green and regular green cookies.
4. This is the point when we added food coloring. My little helper added much more then we needed, about 10 or maybe even 12 drops when 3 would have been fine. No big deal, though. Then, I used the hand mixer to combine it all again.
5. Then, I wrapped both balls of dough in plastic wrap and chilled them in the freezer for 15 minutes.
6. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
7. On a lightly floured surface, roll out dough to about 1/4 inch thickness. Cut out cookies and place on cookie sheet. (Tip: I like to cover mine with parchment paper first.) Add sugar sprinkles, if desired. We used green, and lots of them when my little man was in charge.
8. Bake for 10-12 minutes. Let cool on wire racks. Makes about 2 dozen cut-out cookies.

Halloween Cut-Out Sugar Cookies

{I decorated these cookies. The one one the right is the last little ball of dough, and I pinched a small stem with my fingers.}

{Cutting out the shapes}

I have been searching for the best sugar cookie recipe for awhile now. I am not sure if this is it, but it is pretty darn close. The dough is a great consistency for making cut-out cookies and the flavor is good. My only confusion is that they taste more like a butter cookie than a sugar cookie, which reminds me of shortbread. I think I will keep looking for the perfect sugar cookie recipe, but for now, I will share how these turned out. 

{There's no such thing as too much frosting.}

{Don't forget to add lots of sprinkles.}

{You may have to taste-test to ensure that your cookies are edible.}

{Take pride in your work.}

Possibly the best part of this whole experiment was trying out our jack-o'-lantern cookie cutter that I got on clearance at Jo-Ann's last year after Halloween. It's by Wilton and it has several smaller shapes that you can use to make the facial features, which I think is a cute idea instead of plain pumpkin cookies. For frosting, we used this recipe. Again, I am not sure it is the best one available, but it is the best I have tried so far. It is easy to make and easy to spread, and it made enough so that we could divide it up into different containers for making various colors. We left some plain white for the ghosts, and we mixed red and yellow food coloring to make orange for the jack-o'-lanterns. We also attempted (and failed) to make black for some cats (which we didn't even end up cutting out). It was more of a purplish gray, but it all tastes the same, so purple pumpkins were just fine. We also used green sugar sprinkles decorating (I was thinking of stems; the kids had other ideas.) as well as some other Halloween sprinkles. Making and decorating our Halloween cut-out cookies was good family fun, and I think it may become an annual tradition at our house.