Olympic Party Time: Behind The Crafts Part 4 — Olympic Cookies

To finish the day off of our Olympic Day we made a fun snack, Olympic ring cookies. Lilo remembered the cookies we made for the last Olympics and wanted to make something similar. But, since we didn’t have this idea until the morning of the party, we needed something that would be quick and easy.

I was inspired by the technique of dying cookie dough that I previously used for our Easter cookies. So, we started with a batch of simple sugar cookie dough - which is definitely my “go-to” cookie recipe: they are easy to make, and are so buttery and tasty. Here’s the standard recipe, and then I’ll share below how we altered it for these cookies:

Simple Sugar Cookies

1 cup of softened butter

2/3 cup of sugar

1 egg

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

2 1/2 cups of flour

1. Blend butter and sugar

2. Add egg, baking powder, salt, vanilla; blend until smooth.

3. Add flour until all incorporated. Add any food colouring at this stage, and blend well.

4. Cool in fridge for 1/2 hour.

5. Cut out cookies and place on baking sheet 1″ apart.

6. Bake 6-9 mins at 350 degrees.

Once the flour was incorporated in step 3, we separated the dough into 5 mixing bowls, and then added a different colour food dye to each bowl. I put a generous dollop of gel dye in each batch and we squished and kneaded the dough until the colour was all evenly mixed. The butter that we used to make the dough was super soft (out all day/night in our hot kitchen) which really helped the colours to mix in well (something I’ll remember for next time!) The gel dye made the colours very vibrant!

We then put the dough in the fridge for 1/2 hour to harden the dough a bit since it was too soft to work with. Once chilled, we rolled out small balls for each colour and then grouped one of each of the 5 colours together. We place these groups of coloured dough balls onto a baking sheet, and flattened them with our hands. Of course, the girls really liked this part! Finally, we used a small tube to stamp a ring in the center of each cookie, before baking them for about 8 minutes in a 350 degree oven.

I love Olympic rings design, and the vibrant colours.I like that we did different size cookies (which is always good, since Dad likes big cookies!), and that the rings are exactly perfect. I think these cookies have a fun, cartoon-like feel to them - plus they’re really tasty!

I think that’s just about enough crafting and cooking for one Olympics! I hope you’ve enjoyed the Olympics as much as we have in our house, and that maybe you’ve been inspired for a future Olympics celebration!