Fall Leaf Maple Bar Cookies

Fall Leaf Maple Bar Cookies

• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon maple pancake syrup
• 3/4 cup flour
• 1 teaspoon cream of tarter
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Cream together the butter, sugar, egg and syrup. Stir in the dry ingredients, until well mixed.

Roll the dough out on a floured surface, about 1/4 inch thick. If the dough is too sticky, pat in an additional tablespoon of flour at a time, until it is easy to work with.

Use a cookie cutter, or butter knife, to cut out leaf shapes, and place them on a greased cookie sheet.

Bake for 10-12 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Remove the cookies from the cookie sheet, and allow them to cool on a flat surface.

Prepare Frosting:

• 2 2/3 cup powdered sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 tablespoons milk

Spoon about a quarter of the frosting into a Ziploc-type sandwich bag, and add drops of red, yellow, and blue food coloring to make brown (as you can see, I ended up with more of an olive green - but that worked, too). Zip up the bag.

Snip a small piece of one corner off, and pipe an outline, onto the cookies.

Add another tablespoon of milk to the remaining frosting, and divide it among three additional sandwich bags. Add yellow food coloring to one, red to another, and green to the last.

Cut a corner from each of the bags, being careful not to let it flow out all over the place. Pipe, or pour, the colors on, in blobs, allowing them to fill in the center of the cookies.

Take a tooth pick, and run it up the center of the cookie, from bottom to top, and from the center out, to make the impressions of veins in the leaves, and to blend the colors slightly.

These cookies might look like leaves, but they taste like maple bars.

It's great to be a homeschooler.