Funfetti Cookies
Soft vanilla sugar cookies full of rainbow sprinkles, baked for 11 minutes and finished with a few extra on top.
Photograph credit: Sugar Sprinkle Cookies by formulanone · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Flickr · this resized copy is shared under the same licence
It looks like a birthday party and eats like a sugar cookie, which is the point. Funfetti cookies are a soft, buttery vanilla dough loaded with rainbow sprinkles, and they work best when you choose the right kind of sprinkle. Jimmies, the long thin rods, stay bright and hold their colour in the oven. Nonpareils, the tiny balls, bleed and turn the dough grey.
The dough gets a boost from a spoonful of cornflour, which makes the crumb softer and more tender. A little almond extract alongside the vanilla gives the cookies that bakery note, the flavour you recognise from a box of birthday cake. Cream the butter and sugar well, for a full 3 minutes, so that the cookies are light.
Fold the sprinkles in at the very end. Mixing them too long dissolves the colour into the dough and turns it a muddy purple. A few gentle turns with a spatula are enough. Press extra sprinkles onto the top of each dough ball just before baking.
Bake until the edges are barely golden. The cookies look underdone when they leave the oven, which is correct: they continue to set on the hot tray and stay soft and chewy for days.
How to Make Funfetti Cookies
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Heat the oven to 180°C / 355°F and line 2 trays.
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Beat the butter and sugar for 3 minutes until pale and fluffy. Beat in the egg, vanilla and almond extract.
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Stir in the flour, cornflour, baking powder and salt. Fold in 50 g of the sprinkles.
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Roll into 24 balls, press the rest of the sprinkles on top and place 5 cm apart on the trays.
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Bake for 11 minutes until the edges are barely golden. Cool on the trays for 10 minutes.
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Tips That Matter
- Use jimmies, not nonpareils.
- Fold in the sprinkles at the very end.
- Take them out while still pale.
What to Serve With It
Cold milk · Vanilla ice cream · Hot chocolate · Fresh strawberries
Keeping and Reheating
Keeps in an airtight container for 5 days.
The Numbers per Serving
Per serving, an approximate calculation from the ingredient list. Treat it as a rough guide: part of the energy comes from foods, or weights per item, with no recorded source. How the figures are worked out.
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
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