These adorable rainbow sugar cookies are soft sugar cookies with crunchy edges, dusted in colorful sanding sugar to make bright and delicious rainbow sugar cookies. They are sure to brighten up your day!
When I first made these cookies, it was the perfect day – because we had a snow day! So much snow all over, schools, libraries, etc were closed. I measured at least 12 inches of snow in our backyard.
These rainbow sugar cookies were the perfect thing to brighten my day. Now, besides having these cookies in the winter to add a little color and sunshine to your day, these cookies are so fun in the spring too! They’re so bright and colorful – perfect for St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, or any normal spring day.
Biting into one of these delicious and colorful cookies will make your day better, because what’s better than a fresh and yummy cookie?
How to make colored sugar?
Before I could make these rainbow sugar cookies, I needed sanding sugar in the colors of the rainbow. So, I made my own. It was way easier than I thought it would be. It’s really as simple as adding a few drops of food coloring to a little white sugar.
I put about a half cup of sugar into a ziplock bag for each color, so 6 bags each with a 1/2 cup of white sugar. I started with the most simple, by adding a few drops of red food coloring to the first bag. I closed the bag, and let out as much air as possible, and then squeezed the bag, massaging it to mix the sugar with the food coloring, to get the sugar all evenly coated.
Then I continued on with the other primary colors, yellow, and blue, and green since you can usually get green food coloring in the box too. I wanted orange and purple too. So I mixed a few drops of yellow and red for the orange. Mix them in a bowl first as it turns out funny if they’re mixed in the bag. Then for the purple I mixed 3 drops of blue and 4 drops of red.
The final step is to place each of the colors individually on a baking sheet and bake them at the lowest temperature in your oven for about 10 minutes. Mine was 170. This helps the sugar dry out again so it’s not sticky. Pour back into bowls with a lid or ziplock bags to store. Now your colored sugar is ready to use for these fun rainbow sugar cookies.
I used our favorite sugar cookie recipe for these. But I added a dash of nutmeg, to give them a little twist, you can leave it out if you don’t like it. Cinnamon would be delicious too.
These dough for these cookies isn’t rolled out then cut out with cookie cutters, but instead rolling the dough into balls and then rolling each of those balls into your colored sugar.
These cookies get their yummy crispy edges because they are baked at a slightly higher temperature. This means they can be baked for a shorter time period. The cookies don’t flatten as much because of this, so when you remove the pan from the oven do a slight bang on the counter to help flatten them.
These colorful rainbow sugar cookies are the perfect way to brighten anyone’s day! I hope you love them as much as we do!
Looking for more rainbow desserts?
- Rainbow Fruit Parfait
- Rainbow Fruit Pizza
- Rainbow Donuts on The First Year
- Rainbow Cupcakes on Dessert Now Dinner Later
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Rainbow Sugar Cookies
Ingredients
For the Sanding Sugar:
- 1/2 cup white sugar
- 3 to 4 drops food coloring (color of your choice)
For the Rainbow Sugar Cookies:
- 2/3 cup unsalted butter (still cool but pilable)
- 1 1/2 cup white sugar
- 2 cold eggs
- 2 TBS milk
- 1 TBS vanilla
- 3 1/4 cups all purpose flour
- 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp nutmeg
- 1/4 cup sanding sugar in each color; red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple
Instructions
For the Sanding Sugar:
- Preheat oven to 120 degrees or lowest temperature possible for your oven (mine was 170 degrees)
- Line baking sheet with parchment paper
- Pour 1/2 cup of white sugar into a small airtight baggie
- Add 3 to 4 drops of food coloring of your choice into the bag
- Seal bag, removing as much air as possible
- Squish sugar in the bag with your fingers until food coloring is evenly distributed and sugar is color desired
- Spread colored sugar into 1 layer on baking sheet
- Bake at low temperature for 10 minutes
- Remove from oven and cool
- Using the parchment paper like a funnel pour baking into the bag
- Seal bag, removing air
- Break sugar clumps apart with rolling pin
- Store in airtight container
- Repeat for each color desired (if mixing colors, premix in a small bowl before adding to sugar)
For the Rainbow Sugar Cookies:
- LIne baking sheet with parchment paper
- Slice cool but pilable butter into 1 TBS slices
- Cream in mixer
- Add sugar and cream additional 2 to 3 minutes
- Beat in eggs, vanilla, and milk until creamy
- In another bowl, add flour (measure using scoop and level method), salt, baking powder, and nutmeg
- Shift dry ingredients into wet ingredients
- Mix together until all is combined
- Scoop 1 inch balls of cookie dough and place on baking sheet, continue until all dough is scooped into balls
- Refrigerate for 2 hours at minimum
- Remove dough for fridge
- Roll each ball of dough into a smoother ball
- Pour each bag of colored sanding sugar into its own bowl
- Roll each ball in sanding sugar to cover completely
- Divide number of cookie dough balls evenly between the colors using, so you have same amount of balls per color
- Return to fridge for 30 minutes
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees
- Line another baking sheet with parchment paper
- Remove 12 cookie balls from fridge and place on baking sheet, keep remaining balls in fridge in between baking
- Bake for 7 minutes
- Remove from oven, bang pan down slightly on counter, to help flatten cookies
- Cool for 5 minutes, remove to cooling rack to continue cooling
- Store in airtight container
- Repeat until all cookies are baked
Nutrition
I know it may seem like a lot of steps, but these cookies are fairly simple to make, and certainly easy to eat and enjoy.
Ellen says
These are so cute and yummy. Thanks for sharing.