Rainbow Tie Dye Shamrock Cookies

I started putting away our Valentine’s decorations last weekend and it was particularly cold day. Of course that meant Hayla would be extra insistent on playing outside. Never fails, right? In order to keep the kiddo entertained on an otherwise boring, blustery Saturday afternoon, I found inspiration for celebrating the next holiday, which is St Patrick’s Day.

The best kinds of crafts are the ones where you already have everything you need stashed around your house. Our shamrocks started out with a package of pre-made sugar cookie dough left over from a holiday baking gift basket. I would definitely recommend using a recipe for cut out cookies, so that the dough is less sticky to work with. If you’re not in the mood for cookies, you could use salt dough instead to turn your shamrocks into ornaments or other fun decorations!

Hayla is still big on rainbows, so plain ol’ boring white cookie dough wasn’t going to cut it. I pulled out the Wilton Performance Color System I bought to make last year’s cake for Hayla’s Inside Out/Rainbow birthday party. We went with Hayla’s four favorite colors instead of the whole ROYGBIV rainbow out of sheer lack of cookie dough. Pink, purple, blue, and yellow worked well to pair the brights and dark colors like a tie dye would have.

Hayla’s favorite part of the process was getting the dough prepped and ready. She split the cookie dough into fours, rolled each portion into balls, and then used her thumb to form a well to contain the food coloring. Our intention was to follow the color guide for the spring colors, but quickly realized we used way too much dye for the small amount of cookie dough, so our colors were darker than expected.

Letting Hayla count the food coloring drops was almost mess-free. Almost. We decided to put nitrile gloves on that I keep in the kitchen for cleaning to help contain the mess, which did work out pretty well. Make sure you cover your table and have your littles wear old clothes, just in case.

Once the food coloring is well mixed into the cookie dough, we cut each color into four smaller portions to roll into strips. Hayla got to work on her pattern making skills by organizing the strips of dough, which we then rolled and twisted together before rolling out flat with a heavy rolling pin.

One of the neat things about twisting the strips together before rolling out is that the coloring on the cookies is different on both sides. On the top, there were big sections of blue, but the bottom had bigger chunks of purple and yellow, so it was easy to get a variety of colors per shamrock by simply flipping the individual pieces over.

Speaking of individual pieces, the shamrocks start out by cutting the dough with a mini crinkled heart cookie cutter. I got the mini cutters as a set with flowers and butterflies a few years ago and I have found so many uses for them. I really like using them for mini pancakes on special occasions. You know, like that random Tuesday where I got enough sleep that the thought of doing more for breakfast other than pouring milk doesn’t make me want to cry. That kind of special occasion.

Anywho.

You’ll need three hearts for each shamrock, so while Hayla worked on cutting, I started arranging the pieces together on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Once all the hearts were cut out, I cut thin rectangles out of the scraps to make stems for the shamrocks.

Gently push the edges of the pieces together so that when the cookies bake, they will puff up and stick together without losing their overall shape. The package directions for our cookie dough said to bake in a 375 degree oven for 8-11 minutes, but I rolled the dough out thinner than expected, so ours went in for about 6 or 7 minutes to keep from overcooking.

You will absolutely want the shamrocks to cool completely before handling and eating, to make sure they don’t fall apart.