Rainbow Cookie Sandwiches

It all started with unicorn poop.  I saw this post and wanted to make my own, but I didn't want to go out and buy all the glittery stuff.  And I didn't want to use the sugar cookie recipe that she used because I didn't have any shortening.  So I did a quick search for sugar cookie recipes and decided to use Martha Stewart's Ideal Sugar Cookie recipe.

But then I found out why unicorns are now extinct.  Their poop is really hard to work with, so I think they must have been constipated all the time.  This was as close as I could get my cookies to looking like unicorn poop:

 
Sure it's kind of pretty, but then I ran into a second problem.  It didn't taste very good.  Or rather, they didn't taste as good as they looked.  Now I know you're probably thinking, well, what did you expect from unicorn poop?

Then a friend made the suggestion of adding icing and making them into cookie sandwiches.  Brilliant!  I decided to go with the filling for the homemade Oreos from the Flour Bakery cookbook.  And since it was so hard to twist the different colors together, I chose to just press the seven different colored doughs together into kind of a flower/pentagonal shape.  I kind of like how the white colored filling looks like clouds, expanding on the whole rainbow theme.

To get the super vivid, technicolored dough, you'll need to use gel food coloring, and not the watery kind you usually find at the grocery store.  If you can't find any though, you could always just make pretty daisy cookie sandwiches by coloring one rope of dough yellow (the regular food coloring should be fine for this purpose) and putting it in the middle of the other white colored ropes.

Rainbow Cookie Sandwiches
makes 4 dozen

1 batch of your favorite sugar cookie dough
Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple gel food coloring

1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 2/3 cup confectioner's sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon milk
Pinch of kosher salt

 
Divide the dough into six equal parts and put each in a separate sandwich bag. (A food scale is helpful for this.)

 
Add a few drops of red food coloring into one bag and squish around with your hands until the dough is evenly colored.  Add more food coloring to get it as bright as you like.  Repeat for the 5 other colors.  (I don't have any kids, but speaking as a kid at heart, this part was really fun.  So if you trust your kid, you might ask them to help you out with this part.  But I'd keep them away from any white carpeting, just in case.)

 
Roll each colored dough into a long rope, about a centimeter wide.  The ropes will be very long, so it's easier to divide the dough into half first.  Make sure your hands are clean in between each color so that you don't muddy the colors.

 
Stack the six different colored ropes together to form a pentagon with one of the ropes in the middle.  Lightly roll this tube around so that the ropes stick to each other.  Cover with plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 350°F.  Line two baking sheets with a Silpat or parchment paper and set aside.  If you only have one baking sheet, just bake the cookies in two batches.

 
Slice the chilled cookie dough into about 1/8 inch thickness.  Space evenly on the baking sheet.  These cookies will spread a little, so give them at bit of space in between each one.

 
Bake for about 10 minutes; do not allow to brown.  Allow to cool completely.

 
To make the filling, beat the butter until smooth and creamy.  Add the sugar and vanilla extract and beat until smooth.  Add the milk and salt and beat until smooth again.

 
Scoop into a pastry bag if you have one.  (I forgot to put the tip in before I filled my pastry bag so I didn't end up using one and just cut a small hole at the corner.)

 
Match similarly shaped cookies together.  If you are using a pastry bag, pipe a layer of filling onto one cookie and top with its matching half, pressing down slightly to make it stick.

 
If you have the time and inclination, move the pastry bag in and out of the center while moving around the cookie (like you're drawing flower) so that the outside edge of the filling makes a scalloped shape.  Otherwise, just pipe a spiral or if you're not using a pastry bag, use a spatula or butter knife to spread some of the filling onto the cookie.

 
If I were to make these again, I think I'd actually use a lemon flavored icing instead of a vanilla flavored one to make them even more delicious!

Three years ago:  Pear Bread
Four years ago:  Luo Buo Gao (Chinese Turnip Cake)