St. Patrick’s Day Cookies
Mon, Mar 12, 2012
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With St. Patrick’s Day just around the corner and crummy weather, it was the perfect opportunity to do some baking with my son. We don’t have a shamrock cookie cutter so we improvised with green hearts and iced a stem on the plate. Spinach juice gave the powdered sugar glaze its beautiful natural green color. Simply dipping the cookies in the icing gave the cookies a clean glazed look.
I used one of my classic sugar cookie recipes {puffy sugar cookies} but you could use the cookies of your choice. I wanted to experiment with dipping the cookies in the powdered sugar glaze but if you want a more traditional sugar cookie frosting I recommend my buttercream frosting. Leave some frosting white, color some green and provide sprinkles and candies for a fun St. Patrick’s Day baking project with your kids.
- 3¼ cups flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- ½ tsp salt
- ½ tsp nutmeg, optional
- ½ cup butter, softened
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 egg
- 1½ tsp vanilla
- ½ cup sour cream
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- ½ tsp vanilla
- 1 Tbsp milk or water, to consistency
- Spinach juice, optional
- Cream the butter and the sugar together.
- Add the egg, vanilla and sour cream and mix well.
- Gradually add the dry ingredients, stirring until a soft dough forms.
- Wrap the dough in plastic wrap or place it in a sealed container and chill it in the refrigerator for 1 hour or overnight. This will make it easier to roll out the dough.
- Remove half of the dough {letting the other half continue to chill in the refrigerator} and roll it out to ¼-inch thickness on a lightly-floured surface.
- Cut the dough with the cookie cutters of your choice.
- Repeat the process with the scraps of dough and the other half of chilled dough in the refrigerator. I have found that it is best to leave any dough that I’m not currently working with in the refrigerator. This way it stays chilled and firm and is easier to roll out.
- Place the cookies on a baking sheet. This is the time to decorate them if you are using sprinkles but if you plan to frost the cookies, leave them plain at this point.
- Bake the cookies at 400 degrees for 6-8 minutes until the edges and bottom of the cookies are just starting to turn a light golden brown. They will set up more as they cool so be careful not to overbake them if you want soft sugar cookies.
- Let the cookies cool for 10 minutes on the cookie sheet.
- Then, transfer the cookies to a wire rack and let them cool completely.
- Frost and decorate them as desired.
- Mix the ingredients together.
- Add spinach juice to give natural color, if desired.
- Adjust the consistency according to your needs.
- I have never followed a strict recipe but have always made it to consistency. The ratio I have listed above is a general guideline. The icing should be runnier than a traditional buttercream frosting but for these cookies I made the icing a little thicker than normal so that it wouldn't run off the edges of the cookies.
- Working with one cookie at a time, dip the cookie into the icing, making sure that it glazes the cookie all the way to the edges.
- Gently shake the cookie to let excess icing drip off.
- Let the iced cookies set on a cookie sheet lined with waxed paper.
Tags: green frosting, natural food dyes, powdered sugar glaze, shamrock cookies, spinach, St. Paddy's Day, St. Patrick's Day, sugar cookies
Cute cookies! I love the idea of using spinach juice to color to glaze – I’m going to try that!
These look so great! I could never get a great green from spinach. So excited that you did! We love to make an avocado frosting using (obviously) avocado in place of most of the butter. Your guests won’t have a clue!!!
Katie, this past year I made a chocolate avocado cream frosting/glaze using avocado in place of the butter but the chocolate masked the green color. Hearing from you makes me want to try a white frosting so that I can see the avocado green!!