Colorful Swirl Cookies

This week I have done a little Christmas baking. Thanks to Pinterest I tried a couple new recipes.

This Pinterest pin was my inspiration for one of the Christmas cookies I baked, recipe here:

Mine looked nothing like this beautiful master piece, and they weren't the best sugar cookies. But since I love cookies, I ate way too many of these mediocre cookies.

Colorful Swirl Cookies

- 2 cups of flour (The recipe that I followed, used regular flour, but the recipe they followed said cake flour. So maybe it would have tasted better with cake flour?)
- 1/2 tsp of baking powder
- 1/4 tsp of salt
- 2/3 cup of unsifted powdered sugar
- 1/4 cup of granulated sugar
- 2 1/2 sticks of unsalted butter
- 1 tsp of vanilla
- 1/2 tsp of food coloring your choice (and/or 1/2 tsp of any desired extra extracts)
- 1 1/2 cup of holiday sprinkles (I only used about 1/4 cup of sprinkles)

1. Mix together flour, baking powder, salt, and sugars.
2. Add in butter and vanilla extract, mix until smooth.
3. Remove half of the dough and roll it between two pieces of wax paper. About 9 x 11 (I think mine was more 11 x 11) and about 1/4 inch thick (I just eye balled it).

4. Then with the remaining dough in the bowl, mix food coloring (if you use a water based food coloring add a little bit of extra flour). Also add extra extract if you want, I added a little bit extra vanilla, but you could use mint, or lemon, or whatever you like.
5. Then roll out the second half of the dough, the same way as the first half. Then refrigerate for about 2 hours.

6. When firm, remove the top sheet of both halves of dough, brush the uncolored dough with water using a pastry brush.

7. Now put the two tops together and trim around the outside, to make straight even lines. Then roll up the dough into a long log, and roll into sprinkles.

8. Now wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 3 - 4 hours. Once refrigerated you can slice the dough log (1/4 - 1/8 inch slices) and start baking.

 9. Bake at 350 for 15 - 17 minutes. Let cookies rest on the cookie sheet for about 5 minutes, then move them to a cooking rack to finish cooling.
10. Then enjoy!

This dough was so hard to work with. It was either too hard and cracking, or too soft and melting; there was no in between stage.  Plus, they didn't taste the greatest.  I mean I ate them like they were amazing, but they weren't. Also they crumbled everywhere. You can even see in my finish picture the sprinkle layer was parting from the cookie. So I think I have to call this a Pinterest Fail, maybe?