Easter Cookies (GF Sugar Cookies)

One of the things I have always loved about holidays, is the decorations.  There is just something about being festive!  I loved how all the stores changed for each holiday, especially when I worked for the bakery in Fort Collins.  Someday I always imagined that I would apply that same idea to my house.  I would have decorations for each holiday and it would be so homey, and amazing, and well, Martha Stewart-esk!

Well darn you Martha Stewart.  That was before I had a job that keeps me really busy and before I realized how much decorations cost!  Holy Moley!  It's a conspiracy!  I have been trying to buy items the day after the holiday, but stores are getting trickier and they are either buying less or putting their stock back into storage, because I have been fairly unsuccessful.  

So when I knew I saw these little stencils at Target for a dollar, it made me feel slightly better about my undecorated house during this Easter holiday, and gave me something fun to try that is very festive.

You put these little stencils over sugar cookies and then drop colored sugar over them.  Viola!  Easter sugar cookies.

My pictures are not great and I don't have very many because I didn't think to take any pictures until after I had finished this little project.  So, I'm sorry.

I had to make the colored sugar myself because I didn't have any.  Just put white sugar in a bowl and then add food coloring!  You don't have to use very much food coloring, if you use too much you will make a glob of colored sugar and then you will have to add more sugar to dry the mixture out.

I mad purple, blue and yellow.  I mixed up a batch of gluten free (GF) sugar cookies from a  GF Betty Crocker yellow cake mix I had.  These cookies turned out great!  So tasty and soft, but definitely not paleo nor in any way healthy.  The better crocker mix just uses white rice flour so these are similar in nutrition to their white flour counterparts, but I think they actually tasted better!  It was quick and I needed a quick dessert for a get together that I could eat too.  They people at the get together gobbled them up and couldn't stop raving about how they didn't even taste that they were gluten free.  See the recipe below because these cookies were amazing!

I tried to use the colored sugar and stencils right on top of the cookie dough.  You can kind of make out the designs after they baked.

I think next time I will make frosting and put that on top of the baked cookies before doing the sugar stencils.  Just a fun idea you can find at Target for a buck!

Gluten Free Sugar Cookies from Cake Mix

Ingredients:

• 1 Box Betty Crocker GF yellow cake mix
• 1/2 Cup Butter (1 stick)
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 TBS almond milk

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 F
2. Mix all ingredients together to form the cookie dough.  Drop by teaspoon full onto cookie sheet lined with parchment paper
3. Flatten using the bottom of a glass dipped in sugar (so it doesn't stick to the cookies)
4. If you want to do the sugar stencils, do that now (remember how to make the colored sugar?)
5. Otherwise, bake for 9-11 minutes, you want to pull them out before they are done.
6. Let cool and frost and then do the sugar stencils.
7. Happy Easter!!