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:

• Green jimmies (kind of a lime green color)
• Yellow jimmies
• Pink jimmies
• Blue sparkling sugar
• Yellow nonpareils
• Orange nonpareils
• Pink jumbo nonpareils
• Orange jumbo nonpareils
• Blue jumbo nonpareils