A quick ode to the delightful rainbow sprinkle. # 139: Sprinkle Cookies

Oh hello, long time no chat! I don’t know about you, but August has been a crazy month. The highlights being that Nate and I moved into our first apartment (yay!) and we’re headed out on a weeklong Southwest roadtrip as I type. It hasn’t left too much time for baking sadly, but I’m planning to jump right back into it in September. Time to break out the fall recipes and think pumpkin-y thoughts.

I wish I hadn’t eaten all of these sprinkle cookies before we left – they would definitely make Hwy 5 more interesting! It’s amazing how enormous California is. If we were on the East Coast, we’d have passed through two states already.

I don’t have any photos from mixing the dough, but it was delightfully easy to make. The recipe is from Smitten Kitchen and it uses cream cheese in addition to butter. I know it sounds weird (isn’t cream cheese for bagels??) but hear me out. It works magic with the texture, keeping the cookies soft and plush after baking. If you are a soft cookie fiend, cream cheese is the way to go.

There’s truly something so happy about rainbow sprinkles. It’s gotta be a nostalgia thing – the bright colors and promise of a sugar rush bring out your inner 6-year-old. They may not be refined or elegant, but I’ll choose a sprinkle-covered dessert any day of the week.

I was putting them back up on the shelf when I saw this disclaimer on the side of the tub. It literally stopped me in my tracks – what could be genetically engineered about colorful sugar?? And in a world saturated with genetically modified foods, why feel the need to mention it on a sprinkle tub? I’m sure there’s a mandate requiring that they specify that genetic engineering was involved, but it still had me giggling to myself in the kitchen.

Just like a snickerdoodle, you have to pre-roll the dough before dressing it up. I poured the sprinkles into a shallow dish and gave each dough ball a sprinkle bath. Have any of you been to the Museum of Ice Cream? Well if you have, you know exactly how it feels to swim in a pool of sprinkles.

Since they don’t spread very much in the oven, you’ll want to pre-flatten them. Or you’ll end up with little, uneven sprinkle mountains (which still sound delicious!) but squishing then with a glass is also too fun to pass up.

Happy munching!

Recipe from: https://smittenkitchen.com/2016/05/confetti-cookies/