Easter Egg Cookies (aka Glitter Balls)

I found these cookies on the great site Cosmo Cookie and the pictures were so enticing I had to make them. The original name is the "Glitter Ball" cookie, but I think I'll call them Easter Egg cookies since that's what they remind me of!


I'll copy the recipe here but I have no problem saying Cosmo Cookie does a much better job of going through it with beautiful pictures, so it's worth going to that blog post!

Some comments: the cookies are kind of dry- they are basically butter cookies, with a shortbread-like consistency. But the finished product, with all the sugar sprinkles and the creamy frosting filling, comes out tasting pretty good. They're sweet but a little heavy. A good "let's get dressed up and go to a party" cookie, not so much a "let's have cookies by the fireplace and read a book" cookie.

See also my note at the end about the filling!

-----Here's the recipe: -----
Ingredients:
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened at room temperature
1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
1/4 teaspoones salt
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
Sanding sugar, in assorted colors

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Beat butter, confectioners' sugar, and salt with an electric mixer on medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, 3 to 4 minutes, scraping down side of bowl as necessary. beat in vanilla. Reduce speed to low; add flour, and mix just until combined. Shape into 3/4-inch balls (chill dough if too sticky). Place sanding sugar in shallow bowls. Roll each ball in sanding sugar, and place on parchment-lined baking sheets, spacing 1 inch apart.

Bake, rotating sheets halfway through, until edges are lightly golden, 15 to 18 minutes. let cookies cool completely on a wire rack. While cooling, make filling!

Creamy Ginger Filling

Ingredients:
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened at room temperature
1 cup confectioners' sugar
1 tablespoon honey
2 teaspoons freshly grated ginger

Beat all ingredients by hand or with an electric mixer on medium-high speed until smooth. Filling can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator up to 3 days.

Spread 2 cookies with just enough filling to allow them to stick together.
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*I played around with the filling flavoring, because I thought it would be fun to have each color be a different flavor. After mixing only the sugar and butter, I split the frosting into 3 separate bowls, and then added the reduced amount of ginger & honey to one bowl for the original recipe. In addition to the ginger filling, I also made a cinnamon cheesecake filling (I have some cheesecake flavoring from a local bake store that came in handy!), as well as an almond filling which worked really nicely with these cookies (add a little almond extract).

Overall: a good, pretty cookie. Some cookies are better seen than eaten; I wouldn't go quite that far with these, but they are no chunky monkey. ;-)