Play Dough Cookies

I made this yesterday for Shea's birthday treats. Lots of ooohs and aaaahs. They are such great looking cookies and so fun for the kids. I grabbed the recipe from All Recipes and if you search for this one, you'll see pictures of all sorts of variations: black and orange for Halloween, red and green for Christmas, etc.

They are not hard to make, just a bit time consuming. But they truly are kind of fun. It's just like playing with PlayDoh. You just get to eat it later.

Ingredients:

3/4 cup butter, softened
3 ounces cream cheese
1 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
assorted colors of paste food coloring
24 lollipop sticks

Directions:

In a bowl cream butter, cream cheese and sugar until fluffy. Add egg and vanilla; beat until smooth.

In a medium bowl combine flour, baking powder and salt. Add dry ingredients to the creamed mixture. Stir till soft dough forms. Divide dough into fourths. Tint each with a different food color. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill for 2 hours.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Working with half of each color, shape dough into 3/4 inch balls and for each cookie place 1 pink, 1 green, 1 blue and 1 orange ball together to make 1 large ball. Shape into a 12 inch long roll (like a snake), starting at one end, coil roll to make a 2 3/4 inch round cookie. Place cookies 3 inches apart on lightly greased baking sheet.

Carefully insert lollipop sticks into bottoms of cookies.

Bake cookies for 8 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool and store in an airtight container.