Rainbow Fortune Cookies

Making home made fortune cookies have been on my to do list for a long time.  I've loved them ever since I got my first Chinese take out many moons ago.  My kiddos also love these crunchy little cookies too.  

I mean really who doesn't like fortune cookies??

And because of my love for all that is rainbow - I decided to try to make some rainbow striped ones for Saint Patrick's Day.

The cookie batter is really simple and made with just egg whites, sugar, butter, vanilla, flour, and water.  These have food coloring as well.  Once the batter is mixed, divide it up until small bowls and tint each your favorite rainbow colors.

You do need to do only a 2-3 cookies at a time since you need to work with them quickly once they bake.  For the rainbow effect, add the batter to plastic bags, snip an end and pipe the colors.  Having a 3 inch circle template may help you keep the lines even. 

Once the cookies bake (only 7 minutes) add your fortune then fold the cookie over and then bend it into the fortune cookie shape.  (Be careful they may be hot!)

Place them in a muffin tin until they cool and keep their shape.

I wasn't sure how well they'd come out especially since I didn't do a plain test batch to try out the technique but watching some YouTube videos definitely helps! I used this one:

And you get to come up with your own fun fortunes!

Make some rainbow fortune cookies for your favorite little leprechauns this Saint Patrick's Day!

Directions:

Recipe and directions for original fortune cookies can be found here at Fifteen Spatulas.

• For these rainbow fortune cookies follow the same recipe
• Preheat oven to 350 degrees
• Divide batter into small bowls and add 2-3 drops of your favorite colors of food gel
• Cut 3 inch circle templates (3) and add them under parchment paper
• Add each batter color to a plastic baggie.  Snip an end of each and pipe rows of color following your circle template
• Bake for 7 mins (edges will be just slightly golden)
• Working quickly, flip cookies over add fortune to each and fold cookie in half
• Bend cookies over the lip of a cup to get your fortune cookie shape
• Place in muffin tin until cookies cool and hold their shape

Candy Pots of Gold with Mini Gold Cookies

Hey all!  It's one of my favorite times of year when all the green and gold treats start showing up over the interwebs! 

Green has been a favorite color since I was little and I still fall for green stuff to this day.  And gold, well that's a no brainer because you don't expect treats to be gold - but there are plenty of them these days.  

So for this St. Patrick's Day I made some little pots of gold with gold treasure inside.  Everything is edible and would make a nice little addition to a Saint Patrick's day party (or just as a special treat for your little leprechauns)!

See the easy directions here over at sheknows!

Check out these other St. Patrick's Day Treats too!

Leprechaun Cupcakes

Rainbow Inside Cupcakes

Green Matcha Shortbread

Watermelon Peeps Squares

Lucky Charms Oatmeal Cookies

Naturally Colored Rainbow Cupcakes

Green Beer Bread

Rainbow Striped Cookies

Mint Chocolate Chip Men Cookies

Mini Candy and Marshmallow Cups

Rainbow Blondie Bars

Matcha Shortbread Cookies - 2 Ways

Since St. Patrick's Day is right around the corner I figured I'd add to all the green foods that show up this time of year.  

And believe it or not I've never made shortbread before even though shortbread cookies are one of my favs.  The dough is so simple to make - butter (and lots of butter), flour, sugar, salt and to green it up I added some matcha.  Matcha is green tea powder and if you like green tea then you'll LOVE matcha.  Plus it gives everything a neat green color.

I used small cookie cutters to cut out the little flower shapes but also added some of the dough to my madeleine pan.

Bake shortbread about 12 -15 minutes but don't over bake or the cookies will be too brown and you definitely want to see the color matcha gave them! (You can see my madeleines are a bit too browned when they came out of the pan - newbie move!)

I added a little matcha to some vanilla buttercream and slathered a bit between 2 of the cut out cookies.  A big green sprinkle added makes them look like little happy flowers.  

Or drizzle with some melted green candy wafers and other sprinkles and you have a neat green treat for St. Patrick's Day.  Enjoy with a cup of green tea or coffee!

Have an awesome weekend and thanks for popping by!

The matcha shortbread recipe can be found here on Martha Stewart

Lucky Charms Oatmeal Cookies

Hey there! I finally have a weekend that we have absolutely nothing going on.  It seems like ever since Spring started we've been non-stop every weekend.  The kiddo's little league was a lot of fun his first year, but lots of practices, games, volunteering at snack bar etc.  Plus all of the regular end of school year stuff.  I also had a work trip to Japan in June and we had vacation to San Diego last week.  So it's been so hectic and busy that to have a weekend with no running around has been so great.  

But of course I couldn't just sit around doing nothing - well I did for a little bit and that was enough.  I also made some cookies.  Oatmeal cookies. With. Lucky Charms.  Yes, Lucky Charms the cereal! 

They made them this year in this "limited edition" box with all green clover marshmallows.  

Lucky Charms are one of my favorite junkie cereals.  I indulge every once in a blue moon (or maybe green moon in this case).  So I bought a box on sale after St. Patrick's Day and immediately forgot about it.  When I found it today, going though some bags, I thought it would be fun to make cookies with them.

I used the recipe on the Quaker Oats container for Vanishing Oatmeal Raisin Cookies.  Mix up the cookie dough as per the recipe but I used 1 and 1/2 cups of the dry oats and 1 and 1/2 cups of the Lucky Charms (instead of 3 cups of oats in the recipe).  I also substituted yogurt raisins for regular raisins.  

Bake at 350 degrees for 8-9 minutes or just brown around the edges and top.

The recipe held up to its name and these cookies vanished quickly! 

Ginormous Lucky Charms Oatmeal & Yogurt Raisin Sandwich Cookie

Especially if you add a little cool whip and make a Lucky Charms Oatmeal Cookie Sandwich.  

Not that I did that, because that would make a huge oatmeal pie like cookie that would need to be taste tested immediately and after coming back from an indulgent vacation last week eating something like this would be so gluttonous (aka magically delicious)!

Anyway I hope you are enjoying your summer and have some time to relax and sit back and enjoy the days.  It will be Fall again before we know it!  Have a great week!

Green Beer Bread

So Saint Patrick's Day is this Monday! Woo! I pretty much love anything green, even green food which is really weird since green food can = green mold which = pretty gross.  But let's pretend green mold does not exist for the purposes of this post.  

I think my love of green stuff started when I was little and the local supermarket had green sandwich bread around St. Patrick's Day time.  Does anyone else remember that? Loaves of pre-sliced green bread like white wonder bread but green?? I can't find any pictures of it so I'm starting to think I imagined the entire thing.

Anyway, St. Patrick's Day is all about green stuff (obvi) so green food is a must as well as green drinks! So I figured I'd throw them both together in some green beer bread. 

Green beer in a Green Lantern glass seemed appropriate

Start with your favorite beer.   And just like when you cook with wine, use a decent-good beverage if you want a good final product.  Hubby always has some excellent beers on hand so I snagged one.   Nugget Nectar, an IPA from TRÖEGS, craft brewery based out of PA (great beers and great artwork on their labels!)

For recipes, I went to my friend Google, and found this one for 5 ingredient beer bread by Half Baked Harvest.  So simple and it looked really tasty.  In place of the brown sugar, I substituted 1/2 cup of regular granulated sugar.  I also added a little green food color to the beer before adding it to the mixture (see pic above).

Add the green beer to your dry ingredients and mix.  But don't over mix. The dough will be a little sticky.  Add to a pan (I also added some green non-pareil sprinkles just because I could) and bake at 350 degrees for about 40-50 minutes.  

Ta-da, green beer bread

Add a little pat of butter and you're all set.  

If you've never had beer bread before, it's something you have to try.  The alcohol will cook off during the baking process and the baked bread comes out really nice - moist and slightly sweet (but not super sweet).  A nice little treat to bring to a party 1) because it's really tasty and can be eaten alone or as a side with food and 2) it's super fast to throw together.  

And I know not everyone will look at this and go "Yum, that green hunk of bread looks mighty appetizing, give me the entire loaf!", but if you are weird like me and love all green foods, you might.   Or maybe you just like seeing all the fun green stuff on St Paddy's day, either way I hope you like it! 

Thanks as always for stopping by and have an excellent St. Patrick's Day monday!  If you happen to remember green sliced bread from years ago, please leave me a note so I know I'm not imagining things from my childhood!

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Rainbow Inside Shamrock Cookies

So I made some chocolate covered "shamrock" cookies for St. Patty's Day.  And sorry, I know I just did rainbow cupcakes tinted with all natural colors last week, but I can't help it.  There is just something about having multi colored anything that makes me smile and forces me to make more and more rainbow treats.

And rainbows inside the cookies - heck yes!! 

Surprisingly, I don't actually have a shamrock shaped cookie cutter.  But I figured hearts would work work ok for this.

To speed this up I started these with a boxed sugar cookie mix.  

1. Divide into separate cookie dough balls (as many colors as you want in your rainbow)
2. Tint with your fav food gel colors
3. Roll each color out to about 1/8 inch thickness and stack one on top of each other
4. Cut slices off and then roll that into about the size of your cookie cutter (too big or too small and you won't see some of the colors of your dough)
5. Bake - these are mini cookies (only about 1 inch in size) so they baked only about 5 minutes @ 350 degrees
6. Once cookies are cooled, dip into good dark chocolate 
7. Decorate or drizzle with your favorite sprinkles or go for multi color candy melt drizzles

The little mini rainbow cookies are super cute on their own, and would have worked just fine this way, but I wanted to try for the rainbow surprise inside look.

I did make a few larger cookies to, so you can see the rainbows even better! 

Arrange 4 of each heart together and you get your "shamrock" cookies! OK they are really 4-Leaf Clovers, but you get the point!

Do you love rainbows too? What's your favorite rainbow treat to make or eat? And it's finally warming up in the northeast (woohoo!!) so it's time for some spring treats soon!  Thanks so much for coming by, have an awesome awesome (awesome) week! 

Tidy Mom's I'm Loving It

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Rainbow Cupcakes - All Natural Colors

Most of you know that I don't need an excuse to make rainbow filled treats (I mean I have a rainbow page there's been so many) but I do love how all the rainbow stuff starts showing up with St. Patty's day around the corner.

And I have done rainbow cupcakes before - super bright and colorful made with the typical food gels and colorings to make them.  But since I made those awhile ago, I've also been experimenting with getting colors from natural food colorants, like in this Halloween Bundt Cake, in these Blueberry and Strawberry Striped Krispie Treats, these Whoopie Pies, and these 4th of July Madeleines.

The colors for these rainbow cupcakes are made from this stuff:  

Freeze dried cranberries, freeze fried blueberries, carrot puree (yep baby food!), baby spinach, egg yolk, and crispy mandarin orange slices.  I think for most of these ingredients, you'd say ok, yep I get that.  Most are fruit and carrot is in carrot cake.  But spinach in a cupcake? Yes, and you know what it doesn't taste like spinach at all once you add it to the cake mix.  Really, it doesn't taste spinachy at all.

Start with your favorite white cake recipe or even faster, use a boxed mix.  Mix up as directed but add about 1/4 less liquid.  Separate evenly into 5 bowls as your white canvas!

For the colors:

Yellow: add 2 egg yolks to a bowl with the cake batter

Pink: add 2 Tbl crushed freeze dried cranberries (I put them in a mortar and pestle and go to town to pulverize as much as possible

Orange: add 1 Tbl of carrot puree plus 2 Tbl of crushed mandarin orange pieces

Blue/Violet: add 2 Tbl crushed freeze dried blueberries

Green: food process 1 cup of spinach leaves with about 1 Tbl milk.  Add about 2 Tbl of the puree to the batter

That's pretty much it! Then just add a little of each color to your cupcake liners.  I went with plain white so you can see the color through them.  There will be tiny little pieces of the fruit/veggie but that didn't really bother me, and didn't affect the taste or texture at all.  

Then bake them up as usual.  

Don't they look like funky muffins this way? They would be so fun served just this way on their own. 

But I had to add some homemade vanilla buttercream of course.  And I pretty much love the contrast between the rainbow colors and the whiteness of the frosting.

I think these are one of my fav cupcakes now.  Both the look and taste.  They still taste pretty much taste like a white cake, but with a little bit of flavor that you just can't put your finger on.  My kids didn't even ask about the colorings, just thought cool, rainbow cupcakes!

And although I have found you can't get super bright colors from some of the natural colorants, they are still pretty cool colors and fun!

Am I right??

Make some for St. Patty's Day (or whenever really!). Thanks for stopping by, I am hoping the weather people are wrong and I won't wake up to 6 inches of snow tomorrow.  I love winter and all, but really enough is enough! Come on Spring!  Have a great week!

Tidy Mom's I'm Loving It

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Two-Cup Tuesday

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Tatertots and Jello - Weekend Wrap Up Party

More the Merrier-DIY Home Sweet Home

Kitchen Fun and Crafty Friday