Easter Basket Cookies

5 from 10 votes

Easter Basket Cookies - Easy and Adorable

Just in time for Easter - decorate sugar cookies baked in an egg shape to look like adorable easter baskets!

Prep Time10

Cook Time12

Decorating Time30

Total Time52

Course: Cookies, Easter

Cuisine: American

Servings: Easter Basket Cookies

Calories: 217kcal

Place butter and sugar in a large bowl; beat until light in color. Add egg and milk and beat to combine. Add baking soda and salt; beat until combined. Gradually add flour; beat on low just until the dough comes together. Divide the dough in half, wrap in waxed paper, and refrigerate for 2 hours.
Preheat oven to 375º F. Sprinkle the surface where you will roll out dough with confectioners' sugar.
Remove 1 wrapped pack of dough from the refrigerator at a time and place it on the prepared surface. Sprinkle the top with confectioners' sugar and cover with parchment paper. Roll out dough to ¼-inch thick. Move the dough around and check underneath frequently to make sure it is not sticking. If the dough has warmed during rolling, place a cold cookie sheet on top for 10 minutes to chill. Cut with a 4-inch egg-shaped cookie cutter. Place at least 1 inch apart on a parchment or silicone-lined baking mat.
Bake at 375°F for 11 to 12 minutes or until cookies are just beginning to turn brown around the edges. As soon as cookies come out of the oven, shape by cutting with a 4-inch egg-shaped cookie cutter. Yield: 20 egg-shaped sugar cookies.

Use the above recipe or your own sugar cookie recipe. Bake sugar cookies, cut into egg shapes with a 4-inch cookie cutter according to the recipe directions. As soon as the cookies are removed from the oven, re-shape them by cutting with a 4-inch cookie cutter. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. (See Tip 4)
Smooth the edges of cookies by "filing" on a wire mesh strainer. (See Tip 5)
Fill a piping bag with white or pink decorator icing fitted with a coupler. Starting with the #5 round tip, pipe a horizontal line in the middle of the cookie. Pipe a vertical line from the center, close to the edge. Pipe 4 or 5 spaced horizontal lines across the vertical line. Pipe another vertical line. Pipe horizontal lines, creating a basket weave. Continue until the basket weave is formed.
Replace the #5 tip with a #18 star tip. Pipe basket handle with individual stars.
Fill a piping bag with green decorator icing fitted with a coupler and the #233 grass tip. Pipe grass in the basket. Finish by placing pastel-colored M&Ms in the grass.
Yield: 20 Easter Basket Cookies

If your sugar cookie dough is sticky, you'll want to dust your surface to prevent sticking. I use confectioners' sugar to do this rather than using flour. The reason is that I don't want to incorporate any more flour into the dough. The confectioners' sugar does as good a job as the flour in mitigating the sticking.
I used store-bought decorator frosting to decorate these Easter Basket Cookies. However, you could also use homemade buttercream frosting tinted with gel food coloring.
I've tried using pastel-colored M&M peanuts. However, I thought that they were too big. Regular M&Ms tend to work better.
Invariably, the cookies will spread some during baking. Therefore, as soon as they come out of the oven, I take the cookie cutter and cut the still-soft cookies to return them to their original size and shape.
The downside to cutting the baked cookies is that their edges are no longer smooth. Therefore, I "sand" the edges using a wire mesh strainer. When Susan and I took a baking class in Paris, this was the technique used to produce smooth edges to the baked tart shells.