coloring rolled sugar cookie dough

[JeanneCake]

I'm thinking of making tiny cookies in pastel colors for Easter and Mother's Day. My tiny gingerbread shapes at Christmas were a huge success, so I started to think about how to do something similar for spring.

I've got enough cookie dough made to last me until next week, so adding color now would only make the dough tough. I'm toying with the idea of adding some liquid/gel/candy color to the creamed butter/sugar (before adding eggs, flour, etc). I wondered if anyone else had done it and whether or not I'd be wasting ingredients.

Otherwise, I'll let you know how it turns out in a couple of weeks!

[K8memphis]

Yes you can add food color to that creamed mixture. And yeah after the flour gets in there it gets tricky.

But umm, hey, you can take some of your dough, thin it out with water and add food color to that. Then pipe that onto your cut out pre-baked cookies. We do smilie faces or whatever. I mean you can decorate them before you bake them. Just experiment a bit with the consistency, you want a nice pipe-able consistency and then bake, you're golden. Y'know test one or two first to be sure all is well and get the feel for it. You could pipe over the entire top if you want. And for sure it flattens out some but you can pipe anything on there, names, faces, whatever, monograms, outlines, etc.

As an aside: Now this is a great example of where a pro would take a small batch made with shortening or part shortening to make the loose dough that is combined with water so it does not spread out so much when it is piped and then baked. But should work with butter doughs too.

[LCS]

I've never tried it, but I just have a question... why does adding coloring make it dry?

[K8memphis]

It's not the adding of the color--it's when the color is added. If it is added after the cookie dough is already made, then the extra working of the dough to incorporate the color make the cookie come out more like bread than cookie--it toughens the cookie to re-work it enough to incorporate the color evenly.

So you wanna add color to the eggs & fat & stuff so it doesn't mess up the texture.

[JeanneCake]

What she said

I wanted to be able to cut out the cookies and package them up in a window box so you'd see these pastel pink bunnies, pale yellow chick shapes, pale lavender easter eggs, maybe a pastel orange flower. Something not as "expensive" as a whole cake, for example, and not another box of chocolate easter eggs (not that there's anything wrong with chocolate easter eggs - I just want to provide an alternative!).

I didn't want to have to go over the shapes with anything, just cut, bake and box! Last Christmas I made tiny gingerbread men, stars, trees, boots and packaged them up and people loved it. It was the perfect hostess gift, a great impulse sale. I saw these cute mini Easter shape cutters and thought it could work.

Will try next week.....

[LCS]

Thanks for explaining that. I read through too quickly and missed the part about adding it AFTER the dough is made. Makes a lot more sense when I actually READ the posts. Haha.

[Joni]

Jeannecake...please show us some pictures when you do them. They sound very cute!

[reenicake]

You can also add the liquid color to your liquid/egg mixture. I've made some pretty intense colored cookie dough (more like play-doh that you can eat in terms of color) this way. Be wary of blue and lavender though, it sometimes bakes out especially at higher temps. Best to bake at 325 even if recipe calls for higher.

[JeanneCake]

reenicake, did you use regular gel color (I have Chefmaster brand) or candy color? Or do you think it doesn't matter?

[reenicake]

Regular water-based gel color worked for me. I've even used supermarket liquid color in place of some of the water/milk in the recipe. Candy color will also work because there is enough sugar/fat in the recipe to carry it.