A number of years ago, I got a cookie press so I could make cookies in fun shapes like Christmas trees, snowflakes, and flowers. Unfortunately, since so many of my cookie recipes are just hand-shaped balls or dollops of dough, I didn’t have a lot of opportunity to use it.
So, when I came across the idea of Jello cookies, I was immediately interested. They’re festive! They’re fun shapes! They’re tasty and great for the season! A single batch of them makes a ton of cookies! Plus, if you want multiple flavors and colors, it’s really easy to make one batch of dough and add the flavorings and coloring later.
I ended up making one batch, and dividing it into four and making four different quarter-batches of cookies. The end result is, as you can see, very colorful and surprisingly flavorful. In fact, my partner was skeptical (he pictured Jello on a shortbread crust, which would be tasty but something very different), and he figured the Jello flavor wouldn’t come through. Turns out, it does, and they’re very tasty little cookies we’ve both been devouring over the holidays.
Incidentally, midway through making these cookies, I realized my cookie press — which I’ve only even used a half a dozen times — was broken! The plastic around the handle cracked so it didn’t ratchet properly, which made it a lot more annoying to use.
To be clear, it wasn’t the dough’s fault, my cookie press just must have been dropped at some point, or had something dropped on it, or just had a fragile spot. Either way, hey, if you know a good brand of cookie press (preferably a durable metal one), let me know in the comments!
Also, as for how many cookies this recipe makes, it’s a lot. It kind of depends on which shape you use (the red flower ones I made are larger and made less than the green Christmas trees) but by the end, you’ll have somewhere around 15-200 or so cookies. Maybe more! Maybe less. Fortunately, they don’t spread, so you can cram them pretty close together on the cookie sheets and bake them in large batches.
Jello Cookies
Equipment
- Cookie Press
- Stand Mixer
- Cookie Sheets
- Cooling Racks
- Mixing Bowls
Ingredients
- 4 Cups Flour
- 1 Tsp Baking Powder
- 1½ Cups Butter Three sticks
- 1 Cup Sugar
- 1 Egg
- 1 Tsp Vanilla Extract
- 1 Packet Jello Powder OR 2 Tbsp of flavor per quarter batch, if doing multiple flavors.
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 400 ℉ and line your baking sheets with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat.
- Sift together the flour and baking soda in a mixing bowl and set it aside.
- In a stand mixer, cream together the butter and sugar until it's light and fluffy. Add int he egg and vanilla and mix it together well. Then, slowly add in the flour mix and combine it into dough.
- At this point, if you're making one flavor, add in the full Jello packet and any coloring you want. If you're dividing it, I found it easier to separate the dough, then add in the flavoring and color with hand kneading later. That way, you don't have to clean out the mixer bowl each time.
- Load your cookie press with your dough with the shape you prefer, and press out your cookies onto your sheet. You don't need to leave a ton of space since they don't spread out, so you can get a lot on each sheet. Add any sprinkles you want here too.
- Bake each batch for around 7-9 minutes, depending on whether you want crispier cookies, and based on how large the cookies are. In my pictures above, the red and blue cookies turned out softer, but the green ones were crispier. It's all tasty, so this is preference.
- Let the cookies cool for about 5 minutes on the baking sheet, then move to a cooling rack to finish cooling.