Watermelon Cookies

After making the watermelon cupcakes, I really wanted to try some watermelon inspired cookies. I saw this idea on the Taste of Home website, and with a couple changes, came up with these cookies.

(See dough recipe at bottom of post)

After making up the cookie dough, take 1 cup out, and dye the rest red (I used the Wilton no taste red coloring). Roll the red dough into a cylinder shape, about 3 1/2 to 4 inches long. Wrap tight in saran wrap and refrigerate until firm (about 2 hours--or you can pop it in the freezer to speed things along).


Split the remaining cup of dough into 2 portions and dye one of them green, leaving the other half plain. Roll each into a ball, wrap in saran wrap, and refrigerate until firm (1-2 hrs).

After chilling dough, roll out the plain dough into a rectangle on waxed paper approx. 8 1/2-9 inches long and as wide as the red dough log. I used my fondant roller to get equal thickness of the dough. Carefully wrap the plain dough around the red dough. Wrap back up in saran wrap and refrigerate until firm again.


Do the same with the green dough, but this time roll it out approx. 10 1/2 inches long.


Wrap it around the other two colors, trimming excess. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 8 hours or overnight, so dough is very firm.


When dough is adequately firm, unwrap it and slice it with a sharp knife, making each slice approx. 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick. You can either put them on a cookie sheet as a circle, or cut each in half to form half-circles.


Add mini-chocolate chips to the watermelon slices.

Bake at 375F for 6-8 minutes, until cookies are firm but not brown. If you baked them at whole circles, take the edge of a metal spatula, and cut them in half while warm. If you did the half-circle, you may want to take the spatula and cut off a little bit to have a very straight looking top.

Cool on a cookie rack and ENJOY! These are almost too cute to eat . . . but then again, they are cookies, so who can resist

Ingredients:

3/4 cup butter, cubed
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
Red and green food coloring
mini chocolate chips

In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in egg. Beat in extract. Combine the flour, salt and baking powder; gradually add to creamed mixture and mix well; set aside.