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Gender Reveal Cookies

Gender reveals are all the rage these days. From balloons to confetti to fireworks, everyone seems to have a different take on this gender reveal trend. 

Obviously, my favorite gender reveal ideas are those involving food! So even though we aren’t having a formal gender reveal I thought it would be fun to create some sweet treats to spread the fun news!

And, if I am being honest, I have been thinking up fun baking-related gender reveal ideas long before I was ever pregnant!

So first on the schedule are these gender reveal cookies! They can be as simple or as elaborate as you’d like because it’s what’s on the inside that counts!

Recipes and Supplies

To make these cookies you will need:

  • At least 1 batch of my favorite sugar cookie recipe (will make 2 gender reveal cookies and 10-12 additional cookies depending on size and thickness)
  • 1 batch of royal icing to cover all the cookies
  • A egg wash (1 egg + 1 tsp water)

You will also need:

How to Make Them

Start by making the sugar cookie dough. Chill the dough so that it’s a bit firm, then roll out as usual. Cut the dough to the desired shape and immediately transfer to a baking sheet or plate and place back in the fridge to chill.

Each of the gender reveal cookies will actually be comprised of three layers of dough. Two will be baked together, the other will be baked separately and “glued” on top with icing. 

It is important that these pieces stay chilled so that their shape isn’t distorted. Because the pieces all need to match together in the end, you want them all to be the same shape and size. 

“Glue” one piece of rolled out cookie dough onto the other by brushing a bit of egg wash around the edges. 

Place another piece of dough on top of the other, then cut out a hole to fill with sprinkles later. 

Alternately, you can cut out a hole in the top layer of dough before placing it on top of the bottom layer. Just be careful not to distort the top layer when moving it. 

Bake the double layer cookies separately than the single layer because they will take a bit longer to bake. 

Also, because its a thicker cookie, it may expand more than your single top layer. 

Don’t fret!!

Use your top layer as a guide and cut around the thick bottom layer while the cookie is still hot from the oven. Polish any rough spots with a zester to get them to look like a perfect match.

Now it’s time to fill the cookies with sprinkles!! Obviously, you will need to know what color to fill first, then pour in enough sprinkles to fill the cavity. 

Add some stiff or piping consistency royal icing around the edges and then place your top cookie right on top. Press the cookie down firmly to make sure it’s nice and secure!

You can immediately start to decorate the cookies once the top layer is in place. 

For these cookies, I kept it pretty simple. I outlined the onsie with white icing, then flooded it with flood consistency icing. 

I immediately went in with blue and pink flood consistency icing to add some dots and stripes. 

And there you have it! Super fun and cute gender reveal cookies!

I recommend making at least 2 so that both parents can open them at the same time. 

You can even make these for twins!

I had so much fun making these, but of course, I’m not giving our gender away just yet! I have a couple more fun reveals planned this week so you will have to wait and see!

 

Donut Cookies

Who doesn’t like donuts? 

Who doesn’t like cookies?

Then I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t like these adorable donut cookies, which are perfect for National Donut day! They are just so cute and were so easy to make!

Supplies and Recipes

For these cookies, you will need:

  • Cookies shaped like donuts, which I cut out using a large circle cutter and a small circle cutter.
  • Royal icing thinned to flood consistency in light brown, dark brown, pink, and white
  • Piping bags or zip-top bags
  • Sprinkles or jimmies
  • Toothpick or scribe tool
How to Make Them

Outline the cookie with light brown flood consistency icing. Let the outline dry for about 1 minute. 

Fill in the entire outline with flood consistency icing. Use a scribe tool or toothpick to pop any bubbles. Then let crust over for at least 10 minutes, if not longer.

Outline the frosting in pink, dark brown, or white (or any other color) flood consistency royal icing. Let the outline dry for about a minute. 

Fill the outline with flood consistency icing.

Immediately sprinkle on sprinkles.

Now if you can’t decide between a donut and a cookie, you don’t have have to choose!

They are perfect with a cup of coffee!

Sprinkle Stuffed Piñata Cookies

These cute little piñata cookies were sort of a last minute idea. I was seeing all sorts of cute decorations for Cinco de Mayo and I felt like I was missing out on the fun! I was toying around with various ideas for cookies, most involving lots of icing and decoration (and lots of time), but in the end, I decided to do something a bit more simple. Something that would be fun for the whole family.

So I made these adorable multicolored piñata cookies filled with sprinkles! They were so much fun to make and even more fun to break open. 

This would be a great last-minute activity with the kiddos or if you are throwing a Cinco de Mayo party. They only take a couple hours to make and most of that time is spent waiting for the dough to chill. 

How to Make Them

Start off by making 1 batch of my sugar cookie dough then divide that into 5 pieces. Color each piece a different color. Most piñatas are made up of blue, yellow, orange, pink, and teal.

Wrap up the balls of dough and let them chill in the fridge for 20-30 minutes.  

Once they are slightly chilled, roll out each color into a relatively thin sheet, about 1/8″ inch – 1/4″ inch thick. Stack the sheets on top of each other, making sure that they adhere to one another by brushing each layer with a bit of water or an egg wash. 

After you have a full stack, cut it into thirds and put each stack on top of the other. Then cut in half and place one half on top of the other until you have a nice little block of rainbow cookie dough. 

Press all the sides together to make sure that all the layers are sticking to one another. Then wrap the block up in plastic wrap and let chill for about an hour. 

Once the block is chilled, slice it into 1/2 inch slices. Roll out each slice to the desired thickness for your cookie. I prefer to roll the dough so that they colored layers become wider as the dough is rolled. 

Then cut out your cookie as desired. If you can fit more that one piñata on the slice of dough, the better. Just make sure that the lines are horizontal not verticle on the piñata. 

If you want to fill some of your cookies with sprinkles, cut out a rectangle in the belly of every third piñata. It’s a good idea to make sure that the middle cookie is on the thicker side so that you can fit more goodies. 

While the cookies are baking, make your sprinkle mix. Since I have a bunch of plain sprinkles in different colors, I just mixed up a few different varieties. I like to mix big and small round sprinkles, with jimmies and colored sugar. There wasn’t a real rhyme or reason to my mix. I just wanted a good mixture of colors similar to my piñata. 

If you don’t have lots of extra sprinkles laying around or aren’t that confident in whipping up your own mix, there are lots of premade mixes out there that would be perfect. Like this one, this one, or this one.

To assemble them, you will need a bit of royal icing in piping consistency. But only a little bit. You can make a full batch and save the rest for later.

Or you can do what I did, and cover some of the extra cookies made with the leftover scraps of dough with icing and leftover sprinkles.

While they aren’t the most perfect cookies, they are awfully fun. And even more fun to make!

Just be prepared to have sprinkles all over your kitchen!

Supplies 

Other than the sprinkles, there aren’t a lot of extraordinary supplies that you will need for these cookies. You can use whatever food coloring you have on hand, but of course, I prefer Americolor Food Gel. 

You won’t even need a special cookie cutter. I didn’t use one! But if you want to make life easier on yourself, then get this one. 

For the sprinkles, I believe all of the sprinkles used are Wilton single sprinkle packs which you can see in the photo above. I purchased my sprinkle packs at Michaels then put them into these little bead boxes so that I have my own sprinkle bento box. 

However, if you would like to make the exact same mix that I used, here’s how to replicate it:

 

Funfetti Sugar Cookies

Funfetti Sugar Cookies

Guys! It’s been so long since I have written a blog post! Anything posted in the last 3 weeks was written before we left for Germany. Honestly, the break was nice. Especially last week, when I took a legitimate break and didn’t post anything. But the timing couldn’t have been better because work was crazy and I had so many extracurricular activities. I would have had a break down if I had made myself post anything. 

But now I am back and so excited to share this funfetti sugar cookie recipe with you! 

Funfetti Sugar Cookies

This past weekend I spent pretty much every free minute in the kitchen making cookies for a friend who’s company is turning 1! Very exciting, right? Her company, SkillPop, hosts pop-up classes for adults on any number of subjects from personal finances to water coloring. I am actually teaching a cookie decorating SkillPop class this week!

But instead of just making any old sugar cookie, I decided to make funfetti sugar cookies. Because to me, a it isn’t a birthday without funfetti!

Funfetti cookie dough

The recipe is essentially my sugar cookie recipe with sprinkles added. I also added lemon zest to the dough and lemon juice to the icing to really make the flavor pop.

While I did end up covering these cookies with icing, they little bits of sprinkles still made an appearance. They are like a little fun surprise when you bite into the cookie. 

PIN NOW, MAKE LATER

Funfetti Sugar Cookies

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Funfetti Sugar Cookies

Yield: 18 cookies

Ingredients

  • 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar
  • 1/3 cup powdered sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 2 tsp vanilla extract
  • zest of 1/2 lemon
  • 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
  • pinch of salt
  • 1/4 cup sprinkles

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 330 degrees.
  2. Place the butter and sugars in the bowl of a stand mixer. With the paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugar until soft and fluffy, about 1 minute.
  3. Mix in the egg, vanilla, and lemon zest until just combined.
  4. Mix in the flour 1 cup at a time until all flour is combined. Fold in sprinkles.
  5. Turn dough out on to a sheet of plastic wrap. Wrap up and place in the fridge until ready to use. (Dough can be rolled out right away if your in a pinch.)
  6. Place a piece of parchment paper down on the counter top. Roll dough out on the parchment paper, using minimal flour to keep the rolling pin from sticking.
  7. Cut dough out to the desired shapes. Bake for 10-15 minutes until just barely brown around the edge.
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Cake Batter Macarons

BBC-Cake-Batter-Macarons-1Are there any two things that are more popular than cake batter-flavored sweets and macarons? They might be the two things I see most when browsing Pinterest. And with all the Pinterest browsing I do, it was only a matter of time before I combined the two things to create cake batter macarons.

BBC-Cake-Batter-Macarons-2I turned to my favorite macaron recipe (by Martha Stewart of course) and just jazzed it up a bit so that they would pass as cake-batter-esq. The first key to any cake batter treat is the sprinkles. I sprinkled on a few to the tops of freshly piped macarons before they hardened (you have to leave macaroons out for at least 15 minutes so that they harden slightly).

BBC-Cake-Batter-Macarons-4The next key to get that cake batter flavor is the filling. Macarons by themselves don’t have a ton of flavor. I did add vanilla, but most of the flavor in macarons comes from the filling. I altered a basic butter cream recipe by adding in actual cake mix. I happen to have some left over Trader Joes French Vanilla cake mix (which is the best, btw!). I whipped up the cake mix with butter and some additional powdered sugar. I also threw in some sprinkles for good measure (they are being shy in these pictures).

BBC-Cake-Batter-Macarons-7I loved how these turned out. They are so stinkin’ cute, aren’t they? I found these baking cups in the pantry that are the perfect size for the little cookie. These would be perfect to make for a birthday party instead of cupcakes or cake, don’t cha think?

 

Cake Batter Macarons
Yields 30
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Prep Time
45 min
Cook Time
15 min
Total Time
1 hr
Prep Time
45 min
Cook Time
15 min
Total Time
1 hr
Macarons
  1. 1 cup confectioners sugar
  2. 3/4 cup almond flour, sifted
  3. 2 egg whites, at room temperature
  4. pinch of cream of tartar
  5. 1/4 cup fine sugar
  6. 1 tsp vanilla
Filling
  1. 1/2 butter, room temperature
  2. 1 cup dry vanilla cake mix
  3. 1 cup confectioners sugar
  4. sprinkles (optional)
Instructions
  1. In a large bowl, whisk together the confectioners sugar and sifted almond meal to get rid of any clumps.
  2. In the bowl of a stand mixer with the whisk attachment, beat the eggs until frothy. Add the cream of tartar and continue to whisk until the egg whites form soft peaks.
  3. Turn down the speed of the mixer and add slowly add the sugar. Turn up the speed to high and whisk the eggs until they form stiff peaks and are glossy. Add the vanilla and whisk a few more times to incorporate.
  4. Remove the bowl from the stand mixer and pour in the almond meal mixture. With a spatula, fold in the almond meal until everything is fully combined and when you lift the spatula, the batter forms a solid, smooth ribbon of batter.
  5. Spoon the batter into a large zip top bag or a piping bag, then pipe out 1 inch circles onto a lined baking sheet.
  6. Tap the bottom of the baking sheet on the counter in order to remove the air bubbles from the macarons. Leave the sheet out on the counter for 10 to 15 minutes until the tops of the macarons are no longer tacky.
  7. Preheat the oven to 375. Once macarons are ready, reduce heat to 325 and bake for 10 minutes. Remove and let cool for a few minutes before removing from sheet.
  8. In a large bowl, whisk together butter, cake mix, and sugar until smooth. Stir in sprinkles.
  9. Spoon into a small zip top bag or piping bag. Pipe filling onto cookie leaving a small margin for spreading.
  10. Top with a similar sized cookie.
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