Again, earlier this summer we were invited to a BBQ with some friends and as always I chose to bring the dessert. Since there were going to be many little children I thought it would be the perfect chance to try out a new recipe: jello cookies. I seen recipes for jello cookies floating around pintrest for a while now and was curious if they tasted a colorful and bright as they looked: my discovery: they did!

The best thing about Jello Cookies are that you can choose any flavor: ANY flavor of jello and make it into these cookies and there are so many flavors beyond the lime, cherry, or strawberry you may be used to eating.

In choosing flavors I wanted to make sure I have a variety in terms of colors and that the flavors would attract both the kids and adults. So we did watermelon (my favorite) in a bright pink, orange (which tasted just like creamsicles), lime in green, and mixed berry (a combo of raspberry and blackberry; my husbands favorite) in a bright purple.

We found the base recipe found on Iheartnaptime.net to be almost perfect as is as a sugar cookie (may want to try that out sometime)

 

Ingredients

 

• 3.5 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking powder

• 1.5 cups salted butter softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 4 (3 oz) pkg jello

Note: I chose to split this dough into four flavors but you can split it up however you want. My batch made more than 4 dozen cookies but it all depends on the size you usually make your cookies.

Instructions

1. Beat butter in large bowl with mixer until creamy. Add sugar and beat until fluffy. Blend in egg and vanilla. Mix flour and baking powder in a separate bowl. Gradually beat in flour mixture

2.Divide dough into 4 sections (or however many flavors you want). Sprinkle 2 Tb of jello onto each section. Knead together with dough.

3.  You may want to add food coloring to make the dough stand out: I used neon food dye for mine to make them extra bright.

4. Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Roll in extra jello from the packets. (To do that I put the extra jello mixes in bowls then rolled the balls in the mixes). 5.Place, 2 inches apart, on baking sheets. Flatten with bottom of a glass cup.

6. Bake 8 to 10 min at 350 on lined baking sheets. Cool on baking sheets 2 min. Remove to wire racks and cool completely.

Note: you can taste the difference in brands. We bought Jello brand watermelon and berry but store brand orange and lime and it took more of the jello mix to get the same amount of kick/flavor from the store brands then the Jello brand. So if you have a choice: go for the name brand; here it really does make a different in bang for your buck.

These cookies went over extremely well at our summer BBQ. The kids found it entertaining that the cookies tasted like their bright colors. And the adults didn’t shy from the cookies either.