Earth Day Cookies from Scratch
Make delicious, colorful Earth Day sugar cookies from Scratch using your own sugar cookie dough or ours in this fun recipe! (Based on my family's longtime holiday Candy Cane Cookie Recipe)
Ingredients
- 1 1/3 cup Confectioner's Sugar
- 1/2 cup Softened Butter
- 1/2 cup Shortening
- 1 Egg
- 2 tsp Almond Extract
- 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
- 2 1/2 cups Flour
- 1 tsp Salt
- 1/2 tsp Blue Food Coloring (or to desired color)
- 1/2 tsp Green Food Coloring (or to desired color)
- 1/4 cup white jimmies / sprinkles or sanding sugar (optional)
Instructions
Making the Earth Day Cookie Dough
- Start your Earth Day cookies by mixing together powdered sugar, butter, shortening, egg, almond extract, and vanilla extract. (Image courtesy of Klaus Nielsen from Pexels)
- Add in the flour and salt. Mix until combined.
- Divide the dough in half. Add blue food coloring to one half of the dough. Mix well to blend.
- Add green food coloring to the other half of the Earth cookie dough.
Creating Earth Day Cookies
- Lay down a sheet of wax paper. You may also use a silicone baking mat or other surface, if desired. Begin placing pinches of blue and green dough together in a line. They should alternate a bit, but not symmetrically. Be random about it!
- Press the colored dough together to form a cylinder / roll of dough. Continue doing this until you have a long tube of cookie dough. The dough should be erratic with the random appearance of tie-dye.
- Wrap the waxed paper around the roll of dough. Place it in the refrigerator for at least one hour. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Baking Earth Cookies
- Remove dough from the fridge and use a sharp knife to cut ΒΌ inch to 1/3 inch slices for Earth cookies.
- Place the cookies on a baking sheet about 2 inches apart.
- Top with white sprinkles (jimmies), white sanding sugar, or large white sugar decorating crystals if desired.
- Bake until set. For a soft Earth Day cookie, remove after 6-8 minutes, depending on your oven. For a crunchier cookie, leave in the oven an extra minute or two (9-10 minutes). Remove from the oven and enjoy!
Video
Notes
These cookies are really fun to make, even if they're a little time-consuming.
We modeled these cookies after polymer clay FIMO canes used for various crafting activities. While we don't have a dough extruder, it sure was fun making these on our own!
Use our method to come up with other fun cookie ideas for all the different holidays!