Hi! I am very excited to start sharing more tidbits, techniques, recipes and more to help you all with your baking adventures! Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy this tutorial on Surprise Inside Cookies. This is a great activity to do with kids!
First, you want to make your favorite Rolled Sugar Cookie Dough. There are a lot of recipes out there and any of them will work! Separate 3 small balls to make into colors, or as many colors as you want.
Then take your favorite Gel Food coloring and add a couple drops on to each ball of dough. I use Chefmaster Food Coloring because I find you can use a small amount to get truly vibrant colors and it doesn’t brown when baking.
Then knead each color in until it is a solid color.
Roll the 3 colors into strips and make a pattern with the dough as shown below.
Then twist the dough to help marble the colors.
Put another sheet of parchment paper on top and roll the dough out into your desired thickness. I roll my cookies out to 1/4″ using my Joseph & Joseph Rolling Pin. It is so helpful and available on Amazon!
Now you want to cut out your mini cookies. For this I used a Cactus cutter that was about 1.25″ but I recommend a simpler shape for your first try. There are endless possibilities on mini cookie cutters! I have also used stars and hearts. Put a sheet of plastic wrap over your dough so when you’re cutting out the cookies, they don’t get stuck in the cutter. Your dough should also be cold when cutting cookies for best results.
Once you have the desired amount of cookies cut out, start to lay them on top of each other. The amount of cookies you’ll want will vary depending on how many total cookies you want to make.
Roll out more plain sugar cookie dough to wrap around your mini shapes. I am sure you might notice the black specs in my dough. That is from the Vanilla Bean Paste that I use in all my cookie dough for an amazing Vanilla Bean flavor!
Then place your mini cookies in the center of this Sugar Cookie dough! Make sure your mini cookies are pushed together so they don’t separate. Roll the cookie dough over the minis until you can no longer see them.
Then gently roll it into a smooth cookie dough log.
At this point, I covered it in sprinkles for a fun addition. This is completely unnecessary but everything is more fun with sprinkles! I used Shimmies for this and they’re available in a ton of colors!
Make sure to refrigerate the dough for about 30 minutes at this point so it’s hard enough to cut through easily. Then take it out and cut it immediate to your desired thickness using a very sharp, serrated knife. Bake on a piece of parchment paper in a preheated 350 degree oven. I bake these cookies for 8-10 minutes until the bottom is light browned.
These are so fun for holidays, birthdays and just any time cookies! Please let me know if you give them a try and what else you would like to see in future blog posts!
As always, happy baking! ~Nicole