easter sugar cookies

As you can see I had a lot of fun with my cookies for Easter! It is amazing what you can do with a batch of sugar cookie dough, some colour and imagination! I sent most of these in with my husband for him and his workmates, apparently there were fights over who got more and they lasted 5 minutes! 160 little cookies!!!



Here you can see, i divided the main cookie dough into 1 third and a larger piece equalling two thirds of the dough. The 'two thirds' i divided into 5 pieces and coloured them with light pastel tones, wrapped them in plastic wrap and popped them in the fridge. The plain third i wanted to save for mistakes, try again, or use plain. (which came in handy, you'll see!)

My Sugar Cookie Recipe ~ like mum always made =)

Bake @ 180C/350F for approximately ten minutes, you want them cooked but not turning brown, it ruins the colours. If you roll or cut pieces around 3-4mm thick you should be fine. You can always do a quick test time run with a few (then you can test "eat" them too)

1 cup butter
2 cups sugar
2 tsp vanilla
1 egg

4 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Cream together butter and sugar until light and paler in colour, make sure the sugar has dissolved as much as possible, beat in vanilla and egg. Mixture may look a little curdled here but it comes together with the flour!

Gradually beat in flour, baking powder and salt until your dough comes together. Not too soft and sticky, as you are going to add colourings. Unless you use gels, which don't add much moisture.

Divide your dough into sections to colour or keep.
Colour them, then wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate an hour or overnight.
This lets the dough rest and is easier to use later.

When your coloured dough has rested. Grab it out of the fridge and let it come to room temperature, to be abel to mould it better.

For the striped cookies:
I used a third of each coloured piece of dough to roll out into a rectangle. Approx 4-5 mm thick.
(this saves some coloured dough for more experimenting with)
I like to roll our special dough on a piece of plastic wrap so it doesn't stick and can be moved easier.

Then roll each colour in order of preference into the same size and place it on top of the last.

As you can see above!

Once finished, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for an hour, or overnight. I like to pre-prepare my doughs the day before, they rest and have time to set and are easier to cut. Just take the ready dough out of the fridge and go! Don't let it come to room temperature or it will be soft to cut and you will lose shape.

For the square stripes, use a clean, sharp knife and trim the odd edges, so you have one perfect shaped piece of dough. Then cut a long piece from the long side, then cut into the lengths you want for your cookies. I find cutting long strips first saves on crushing the shape, which happens a little if you were to cut the length you want then try to cut pieces off it. There are my cut pieces below!

And when baked.....so cute and SO yummy =)


For these ones with a chocolate edge, i cut of a thick square piece of my layered coloured dough, and rolled out some chocolate sugar cookie dough to go around it, then just smoothed the edges and let rest again.
These can be time consuming, with all the resting, that's why i spend time making one day, resting over night and baking the next day! So much easier and cleaner to cut through.


And there are my chocolate edged baked cookies =)


For the mosaic cookies:
Then using another third of each coloured dough, i tried making 5 longs strips (approx 30cm), just gently roll and push the dough out while you roll, with each colour and place them next to each other in the colour order i liked. Then i rolled them out just slightly to flatten them and bring them together a bit more.

I then divided and cut that large long piece into three and flipped them over on top of each other, alternating side edge colours. Then, realising all the light colours were in the middle, i added a chocolate edge, popped it in the fridge to rest.......and decided to try the mosaic again with my leftover plain dough....experiments are fun! Now i draw diagrams, nothing like doodling with coloured pencils to see what designs you can come up with!


And here are the baked mosaics! See the light colours all in the centre......


THEN! I thought with the last thirds of coloured dough, i had to make a swirly cookie. I love swirls....and rainbows, in case you hadn't guessed by now =)

I used the same technique as for the layers, rolling out in a rectangle on plastic wrap, but went thinner...like 2-3mm thick, gently now, and placed them in the order i want on top of each other. Using the plastic wrap to start rolling it up, go slow and keep it tight, keeping it as even as you can. I didn' worry about odd edges it all blends in nicely in the end. The wrap and roll up in plastic wrap and pop in the fridge.


There are my cut pieces above and baked swirls below! Yummy!


Now the main cookies are done. I used that last third of plain dough to colour and make a beter mosaic!

A little brighter this time, i divided each colour into 4 pieces and rolled them out like you see below (so there will be 4 layers) i used the centre colour from the first layer to start the next layer and so on (so the colours were better distributed). Once rolled out and together i flattened it slightly, then added a new layer until done.

As you can see below! =) Next time i think i'll do 5 layers, an even square!


Here is what the dough look like when i was done!
I wrapped it in plastic wrap and pushed it down into a square ever so gently, and left it in the fridge overnight....


And here they are out of the oven! I'm much more happy with these! Next time, 5 layers....


How can you refuse a happy looking cookie like that?? Happy Baking! Happy Easter! xo