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: 448kcal

Author: Chula King

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. Portion the dough into 1.5- to 1.6-ounce pieces. 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.

Beat together the confectioners' sugar, shortening, water, vanilla extract, butter flavoring, and salt with an electric mixer until well blended and smooth.

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 pastry bag fitted with a #5 round tip and a pastry bag fitted with a #18star tip with vintage bakery frosting. 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 to create a basket weave. Continue until the basket weave is formed.
Pipe stars with the #18 start tip around the outer perimeter of the cookie, forming a handle and decorating the outline of the basket.
Tint the remaining vintage bakery frosting green with several drops of green gel food color. Fill a piping bag fitted with a #233grass tip with the green decorator icing. Pipe grass at the top of 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'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 slightly 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.