I love a good surprise. I also love a yummy decorated cookie, so when you take both of those elements and create this idea of a cookie with a surprise of candy tucked and hidden inside I’m all about making them. Cookies like these have intrigued me since peeking at these candy filled pinata cookies some time back and I have been anxious to make my own version ever since.
As most SAHM know that finding time to do anything for yourself, can at times be a tough. For me as soon as I sit down, someone wants juice, or crackers or a movie on or just me in general. It becomes a challenge to find the time I need to actually pull these ideas from the constant buzz of ideas inside my head to create them.
These candy filled Easter egg cookies were actually the first version of these cookies I made, even before I made the Pot of Gold version for St. Patrick’s day. That idea was born as I was working on these and since St. Patty’s day tends to come before Easter, I posted that one first.
Before I get into the whole shabang, about how I made them I need to insert a small bit of information here. Typically when I make decorated sugar cookies I use Royal Icing to decorate them. I also use Royal Icing when I make sugar toppers for cupcakes like these or these..
But I get a lot and I mean a lot of emails asking me about Royal icing; what is is, how to make it, where to buy it and sometimes just complaints about it. I personally love using it and working with it, as I find it to be unlimited in it’s creative possibilities, but lets be real for a moment.
Preparation, coloring and discovering what the proper consistency can be a bit time consuming for the person using it for the first time. It does even for people like me that have worked with it more. So I have a solution…..for me and for you, for right now. Because as much as I love it, finding the time to prepare it is next to impossible right now and that is at this moment in time like a sharp pin popping my balloon of creativity.
But I found alternative that can suffice for the time being….ready …wait for it….. Betty Crocker Cookie Icing, you can find it at most grocery stores.
It is not Royal Icing, so it’s not for fine detail, it’s has more of a glaze consistency and never dries as hard as Royal Icing does. But for easy to do quickie decorating it totally works. It colors very easily and the consistency is perfect for outlining, filling and a bit of detail work as long as it’s not so intricate. Its a great alternative a pinch
Now moving on.These cookie were made using an amazing vanilla sugar cookie recipe from LilaLoa.com. As I have mentioned before these are my absolute favorite Vanilla Sugar Cookie as of the moment. If your up to making the dough try her recipe. But if your not feeling that adventurous, go buy some sugar cookie dough at the store, although they most likely won’t hold there shape so perfectly after baking.
This is what you will need…
- Egg Shaped Cookie Cutter
- Sugar Cookies
- Royal Icing or Betty Crocker Cookie Icing
- Colored chocolate melts (You could just use this to decorate if you wanted)
- Gel food coloring to color you icing.
- Decorating Bags or small plastic baggies
- Decorating tips/couplers
- Miniature candies to fill cookies with.
- Wax Paper
Roll out your sugar cookie dough and cut out your shapes using the egg cookie cutters. Each cookie is comprised of three parts, so make sure you cut enough cookies out of the dough to be able to assemble them at a later time. Keep two whole and cut a small hole in another (using whatever works.)
Bake the cookie according to recipe directions and allow them to fully cool, before you move onto the next steps. After they are fully cooled you can get ready to assemble them. First I decorated the the tops of the cookies using the cookie icing. I colored the icing I was using a very light pink color. Pipe a nice line around the cookie and let it set.
Do this for every cookie and by the time you finish you can go back and fill in each cookie.You will need to let these sit and dry for a bit before adding in the additional details on top of the cookie.
After they have formed a nice crust on top, if you want to decorate it more you can do so. I used white icing and made a few designs on top of the cookie, to make it a bit more interesting. I started with a zig…
I let the decorated tops dry overnight, but I’m sure a few hours would suffice it you need them faster then that. To put the entire cookie together, get the rest of the pieces and begin assembling them. I used white chocolate candy melts to attach the pieces, because I knew it would dry hard and keep it all together. I just added a bit to the bottom part of the middle layer cookie.
And attached it to the bottom piece.
Let it set up and then the fun begins as you can now fill it with candies! Just don’t overfill it as you won’t be able to attach the top. I used these fun pastel colored hard candies, that my kids call marbles.
Now add the top, I also used melted white chocolate here as well to keep it all together. How pretty!
Let them fully set up before you start doing fun stuff, like cracking them open.
