So Many Colours!

It's still February and spring seems to be making an early appearance.
This is Manitoba though so the odds are high that winter will still surprise us with a nasty blizzard.
But in the meantime I know I'm not the only one enjoying this incredibly warm weather.
Despite a flu bug laying me low for a couple days, Miss K and I have still managed to get outside quite a bit over the past week.

Now, aside from flowers what comes to mind when you think of spring?
Rainbows!
So many pretty colours lighting up the sky and leading you to that proverbial pot of gold.
And that is what I am trying to accomplish (in a way) with this week's cookie.

More and more often I am striving to be more creative with my baking. I've been daring myself to take a recipe that I find and to make it my own somehow. Or to do something completely new. It's not been easy.
And I know that I am far from the first to do rainbow cookies.
I also know that I have some work to do to really get these right.

For starters, I'm working with limited colours.
Now, more than ever before, it's possible to buy a gel food colour in darn near any colour you can think of.
But I still only have just a few to work with.
Although I am planning on expanding my collection in the near future.

I made these cookies using a basic sugar cookie recipe. One that has actually proven to be my favorite out of the many that I've tried.
I did halve the recipe though since it would have resulted in way more cookies than I was up for making tonight.
When my cookie dough was ready I separated it into six small dishes. And then I got out my food colours, my Silpat baking mat and some toothpicks.
For each colour, I used a separate dish and a separate toothpick.

This is where having more colours on hand would have been really great. My blue and red dough is no where near the vibrant colour I had hoped for. Actually, none of them are.
Drat.
I may or may not try to touch them up a bit after they've been in the fridge for a bit.

Sitting in the fridge seems to have really allowed the colours to set and brighten quite a bit which is a relief.
Now the fun part!
Sort of.
But not really.

Time to roll out each bit of dough and then carefully layer them one on top of the other. My Silpat baking mat was perfect for this which actually surprised me. (No, I am not affiliated with Silpat.) I rolled each bit of dough out separately on my Silpat and was able to flip it upside down without the dough falling off until I wanted it to come off.

I started with my red and worked through the rainbow colours, carefully layering them. And then I gently used my rolling pin on all the layers together to really get them to stick together.
After that I cut off the extra edges to make a nice rectangle to work with.
I rolled the combined dough into a log, wrapped it in cling wrap and returned it to the fridge. I need to get better at this part because I always end up with gaps that show up in all my cookies.

After more fridge time I carefully cut the log into slices about 1/4 inch thick and laid them out on a cookie sheet.

Let them bake and then ta-da!

Aren't they pretty?

I do apologize for the not quite complete post tonight folks. But unfortunately because of my timing with getting these cookies on the go I was unable to get my pictures uploaded right away.

If you'd like the recipe for sugar cookie dough that I used feel free to let me know via the contact form or on my Facebook.

Good night folks!