rainbow sugar cookies

“These cookies taste like my childhood”.

If that cookie review doesn’t sum it up – I don’t know what does.We were headed to a birthday barbecue a few weekends ago and I wanted to bring a dessert that said “birthday!” and also – “butter!”.

These cookies did both.  The recipe is a super simple sugar cookie base with a perfect chewy and dense center thanks to the addition of cream cheese in the batter.  You then roll the cookie dough into a bowl of sprinkles/joy and press them down onto the cookie sheet (oddly relaxing).  I used clear vanilla so they were more reminiscent of birthday cake but I’m also very excited to class them up a bit with real vanilla bean and almond extract as recommended in the original recipe.I think you get a lot of bang for your buck with these cookies.  They are so easy to make, stay soft for days, and you don’t even have to wait for the butter to soften.  This batch also yielded 3-4 dozen cookies, which is necessary when you have a strict quality control tasting policy.These cookies are also objectively adorable.  The above photograph is the most popular thing I’ve ever posted on the internet.  I’m expecting the newspaper to print a story any day now explaining how I broke the internet thanks to rainbow sprinkles and 45 “likes”.

It’s possible 45 likes seems big to me because I’m still waiting on printed newspapers.I ran out of sprinkles towards the end and rolled the dough in sugar and cinnamon to make snickerdoodles.  I’m fairly confident that the snickerdoodle version sandwiched around pumpkin spice ice cream may make up the majority of my caloric intake this fall.

Rainbow Sugar Cookies

(recipe from King Arthur Flour and Smitten Kitchen)

3 cups of flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoon salt

2 sticks unsalted butter

1/4 cup cream cheese (or 1/4 of an 8 oz block)

1 1/4 cups granulated sugar

1 egg

2 teaspoons vanilla extract (I used clear vanilla for a real birthday cake vibe)

1 cup rainbow sprinkles

Directions

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

In your food processor, pulse the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt together until combined.  Add the sugar along with the butter and cream cheese, cut up into large chunks and blend until combined.  Next, add the egg and vanilla almond extract and blend together until the dough starts to ball together.

You can also make this in a stand mixer and go the traditional route of creaming the softened butter, sugar, and cream cheese together first.  Then add in your egg and vanilla until combined, and finally stirring in the flour mixture.  I just love the ease of one bowl and no waiting on butter to soften, so the food processor wins my heart on this one.

Scoop out balls of dough about 1.5 tablespoons worth each, and roll them in your sprinkles or cinnamon sugar.  Flatten out the cookies to about 1/2 inch in height by pressing down on them with the bottom of a glass.  Bake 9-10 minutes in the oven.  The cookies will still looked undercooked when you pull them out but they will continue to bake on the cookie sheet before you transfer them to a cooling rack to finish the job.

Taste test 5-6 cookies.

Enjoy!

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