Confetti Cookies

Perfect little sugar cookies that taste like a birthday cake!

I know I write a lot about time passing, but it’s seriously wild to look at a recipe I posted on Instagram and realize it’s almost seven years old. That’s as old as some of my friends’ kids— which is fitting, I guess, because this cookie is perfect for the child in your life (even if it’s secretly you). My twin nieces, Evie and Myla, came over last weekend, so I made them a batch of these confetti cookies. Their 4th birthdays are in a few weeks and they both absolutely love sprinkles.

I originally worked on this recipe for a job I had taken after leaving Buzzfeed. It was another food media job, but I realized within my first week that it was not going to be a good fit for me. I had a friend coming to town to visit me, so on the Friday of that first week, I emptied my desk during lunch and left. I went home and sent an email to HR saying it wasn’t going to work for me— this test kitchen was one of the worst I’d ever seen. Sinks full of gray water with who knows what inside of them, stinky dishwashers with tons of food clogging them, and a fridge full of ingredients a month past their expiration. No one seemed happy to be there (like most jobs, I guess), the things they were working on were uninspiring, and the people I was reporting to seemed clueless. 7 years later, there’s not a single minute that I regret leaving that place.

During my short-lived week there, I developed this recipe. I tested 5 or 6 versions and took the best parts of each and combined them into what I still consider to be a great cookie. These are super buttery, chewy, and soft. They taste like birthday cake, because, surprise: birthday cake tastes like butter, sugar, vanilla, and sprinkles. They look cute and colorful and they’re super easy to make with just a few basic baking staples. I like to order larger containers of sprinkles online, because they’re at least half as expensive as they are in the grocery store.

I bake these at 375º F and pull them out when they’re still a little under so they’re still soft after cooling. It’s also nice to take a large round cookie cutter (or a bowl) and “scoot” the cookies around to give them rounder edges. I used to hate this trick, but I’ve been embracing it recently and the cookies do look tidier after. One last thing: these use 1 cup of bread flour and 1 cup of all purpose flour. I think the texture is better this way, but if you can only use one or the other, they should still be fine (expect a little more spreading with AP flour, a little less with bread flour)!