Rainbow Shortbread Cookies

For St. Paddy’s Day, sometimes, we make all things green…and other times, all things rainbow.  For my little girls, rainbow wins every time.  On this particular day, we made buttery shortbread cookies and swirled them with all sorts of bright colors.  Not only are they easy, they’re bright, happy, colorful and cheerful too!  Happy baking!

This recipe makes about 2 dozen cookies.

Shopping List
1½ cups butter, softened
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon almond extract
2½ cups all purpose flour
a mix of bright food colorings (we used pink, purple, yellow, green and turquoise)

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or spray well with non-stick spray.  Set aside.

In a mixing bowl, cream your butter just until smooth with an electric mixer.  Next, beat in your powdered sugar until creamy.  After that, beat in your almond extract followed by your flour.  Do not over-mix.  Just beat until smooth.

At this point, divide your dough (it will be sticky) into five bowls and color each bowl your desired color.

After that, we did this…

…we lined all five colors up in a row and then we…

…carefully folded them together.  I didn’t want to over-mix them or else the colors would have combined too much and lost their brightness (no one wants brown rainbow cookies, right?!).  After this, I scooped up about two tablespoons full of dough and dropped them on my prepared baking sheets and baked about 10 minutes.

That’s it!

These are buttery little cookies that will melt in your mouth.  Plus, they’re fun and colorful too!