Hey there fellow bakers! With the holiday of Purim coming up this week, I have one question for you, and that is “Who’s ready to party people?!” I love the festive nature of this holiday, and use it as an opportunity to inspire my baking as well!
With this in mind, I was in need of a dessert that was fun, festive and had a major WOW factor. After searching around for the perfect dessert, I came across one of the greatest baking trends! Bakers all over are creating their versions of piñata desserts.These are desserts with the middle cut out, and filled with festive sprinkles and/or candies. Bakers have created piñata cookies, cakes, cupcakes and more. Who wouldn’t love biting into a delicious dessert and watching as all the fun sprinkles and candies come piling out?! Once coming across this idea, I combined it with my love of cookies. As a result, my Piñata Cookies were born!
I am beyond excited to share these cookies with you, and I hope that you’ll let your imagination run wild with decorating and constructing them as I did with mine. These cookies were inspired by one of my favorite food bloggers, who encouraged me to share my own baking creations. So with that, I hope that I can share a bit of that inspiration with you too!
Prep time: 1-2 hours plus chilling
Yields: About 30 large circular cookies
Ingredients
1 ½ cups softened unsalted butter or margarine
1 ½ cups sugar
2 eggs, at room temperature
1 tablespoon vanilla
4 ½ cups flour
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
Royal Icing
4 ½ cups sifted powdered sugar
3 tablespoons meringue powder
6 tablespoons water (more if needed)
Directions
In a stand mixer, cream the butter/margarine on medium high until fluffy. Add in sugar and cream until combined and light in color.
Add in the eggs and vanilla. Once combined, scrape down sides of your bowl.
In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, salt, and baking powder. Slowly add into creamed mixture until fully combined.
Separate the dough in half, and roll the first half of dough out onto a sheet of parchment paper. Do the same with the other and stack the two to prepare to chill. When finished, place dough in the refrigerator for an hour.
Once chilled, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Using a round shaped cookie cutter, begin to cut out shapes, and place them on a prepared baking sheet.
After cutting out all of your shapes, consider how many cookies you cut from the dough, and choose a ⅓ of the cookies to be used for the middle cookie which will contain a hole, and hold the sprinkles for the piñata effect. Using a small round cookie cutter (or any other kitchen appliance you can find), cut a whole in the middle of those cookies. (Example: if you cut out 30 cookies altogether, designate 10 to be the middle cookies). Bake whole cookies for 10 minutes, and cookies with holes for 9.
While cookies are cooling, whisk together all of the royal icing ingredients in stand mixer for 5 minutes. When you lift the whisk attachment, the icing should drip down and fully combine with the icing in the bowl after about 10 seconds.
If you want the icing to be a specific color, now is the time to add in your food coloring.*
Begin to match up your cookies using 2 full round ones for a top and bottom, and a cookies with the center cut out for the middle (there should be 3 all together). Place royal icing in a piping bag fitted with a tip and pipe icing onto the back of the cookie with the center hole. Place and press down cookie onto one of the full cookies to create the first layer. Fill the hole with desired sprinkles before piping icing on to the top of the hole. Place the second full cookie on top and press down.
Decorate the top as desired with your royal icing, and place cookies in the fridge to set for at least 4-5 hours.
Bite in and watch the piñata cookie break open!
*At this point in the process, I dropped a few drops of gel food coloring into the royal icing, and with a toothpick, created a swirl design. I then placed each cookie in the swirled mixture and pulled the cookie out to create a marbled swirl effect. After, I added sprinkles to the top to make them more festive!
*Adapted & inspired by Sally’s Baking Addiction
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