Fun and Fruity Rainbow Cookies

I decided to make one more batch of rainbows for the children, tonight - cookies this time.


I started out with a plain batch of sugar cookie dough, but I didn't add any vanilla, or flavoring, until after I divided it into six bowls. It didn't seem right to serve up colorful - vanilla - cookies, so after I added a few drops of food coloring to each bowl, I started searching through the kitchen for something to flavor the colored dough with. Ideally, a little bit of powdered Kool-Aid, matching each color, would have been nice, but I didn't have any on hand, so I had to improvise:

• For purple - A couple of teaspoons of double strong blueberry tea. I brewed a cup with two tea bags, and then drank what remained after I took out the teaspoons for the dough.


• Blue - One teaspoon of vanilla. I didn't have a good blue flavor, so I figured one layer of vanilla would be alright.


• Green - One drop of peppermint extract.


• Yellow - One teaspoon of lemon juice.


• Orange - Two teaspoons of powdered Tang :)


• Red - One teaspoon of strawberry extract.
  

Looking at it now, it seems like an odd combination of flavors, but they ended up working nicely together, and the cookies turned out lightly fruity, and very spring-like.

I had to add a little extra flour, to stiffen up the dough after the food colors, and flavorings were added. Then I rolled each color, except the purple, out into a small rectangle, and stacked them on top of each other, first red, then orange, yellow, green, and blue. Finally, I rolled the purple into a thick rope, and placed it on top in the middle.

I wrapped the layers of dough around the purple middle, realizing in the process, that I should have made the bottom red, and orange layers wider.

I wrapped the dough in wax paper, and put it in the refrigerator to firm up for about an hour.

Then, I sliced the dough into about 1/4 inch thick slices, cut the slices in half to make rainbows...

...and baked them at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 minutes.

It's great to be a homeschooler.