These make great kid cookies, holiday cookies, and party cookies. Think of these rainbow cookies as a method, not a recipe. By changing flavors and colors with these slice and bake refrigerator cookies, you can make any combination of colors and flavors you desire. Use your imagination.

How to Create Your Own Rainbow Cookies

You can spend forever exploring shapes, colors, and flavors. You make these cookies by dividing your dough into three or four parts and coloring and flavoring each part before rolling it all together.

Preparing the Dough

You can use our simple slice and bake cookie dough recipe below. Form the dough as directed, and then divide it into equal parts to mix in the different colors and/or flavors.

Rainbow Slice and Bake Cookies Recipe

Ingredients:

Directions

  1. In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt together.
  2. Cream the butter and sugar together. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating until smooth. Continue beating until the mixture is light and fluffy. Add the dry ingredients in two parts, mixing after each. Mix just until combined.
  3. Divide the dough into two, three, or four parts depending on how many different doughs you choose to make.

Choosing the Color

We carry over 20 different flavors—everything from root beer to peach. We have over 40 colors.

Use food color gels, not the liquids from the grocery stores, if you can. They are much brighter and much more concentrated. You can make very bright, not faded, cookies.

For the cookies in the following images, we added pink food colors along with strawberry flavoring, a bit of chocolate, and vanilla to make Neapolitan slice and bake cookies.

For chocolate dough:

  1. For one half of the dough, melt two ounces of chocolate. For one-fourth of the dough, melt one ounce of chocolate. While still warm, work the chocolate into the dough until uniform.

For flavored and colored doughs:

  1. Add two or three drops of food color gel in each one fourth or one-third part. Add 1 teaspoon vanilla, 1 teaspoon almond, 1/4 teaspoon peppermint, 1/2 teaspoon cherry, 1/2 teaspoon strawberry, or other extracts to the dough and mix in.
  2. Form the dough into cylinders, squares, or layers—a separate color or flavor for each. Refrigerate until firm.
  3. Cut the dough into 1/4-inch thick slices. Bake on ungreased cookie sheets at 350 degrees for ten to twelve minutes or until the cookies are nearly firmed and very lightly browned. Do not over bake. Cool on wire racks.

Baker’s Notes: Nuts or fruit can be added to these cookies. Maraschino cherry pieces could be added to the pink dough and almond bits to the almond dough.

Preparing the Dough Logs

While some of these rainbow cookies simply require you to roll out the cookie dough into slabs, stack it together, and slice, you will also need to know how to form your slice and bake cookie dough into logs before slicing.

They’re pretty simple to make though making the logs seem to give folks pause. The trick is to make them uniform.

  1. If you have a kitchen scale, use it to divide the dough portions equally. Make a rough rope out of each.
  2. Roll each rope in wax paper. Roll the waxed paper-covered logs on the counter to make smooth logs, stretching and compressing to get them uniform in length. Stroking the logs with your hands helps to make them smooth.
  3. For square logs, press them flat on the counter, stroke with your fingers, and turn them and stroke some more.

How to Make Striped Slice and Bake Cookies

These striped slice and bake cookies are fun, easy, and colorful. They also make for great sandwich cookies. In the image above, we put a layer of chocolate ganache between the Neapolitan cookies. For these cookies, you need at least three colors or flavors of dough.

Directions:

  1. On a sheet of wax paper, roll out your separated and colored dough into rectangles, about a half-inch thick each
  2. Layer the rectangles together, alternating colors and aligning each layer as closely as possible.
  3. Use a rolling pin to gently seal the layers together.
  4. Cut the dough in half, lengthwise, and wrap the dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour and up to a week.
  5. Slice the cookie dough with a serrated knife and bake in the oven at 350 for 10-12 minutes.

How to Make Pinwheel Slice and Bake Cookies

 

These pinwheel slice and bake cookies are fun and festive when you add the right colors. The image above uses a combination of chocolate-flavored and vanilla dough. For pinwheels, you only need two colors or flavors of dough.

Directions:

  1. On a sheet of wax paper, roll out your separated dough into rectangles, about half an inch thick.
  2. Layer the rectangles together, aligning each layer as closely as possible.
  3. Use a rolling pin to gently seal the layers together.
  4. Use your fingertips to roll up the dough into a tight log, using the wax paper as an aid.
  5. Wrap the dough log in plastic wrap, compressing the dough into shape, and refrigerate for an hour or up to one week.
  6. Slice the cookie dough with a serrated knife and bake in the oven at 350 for 10-12 minutes.

How to Make Checkered Slice and Bake Cookies

These checkered slice and bake cookies are fun, little cookies. For these cookies, you need two to three flavors.

Directions:

  1. Roll your separated dough into four thin logs, pressing on the sides to make them rectangular.

2. Using a sheet of waxed paper, press the four logs together, alternating colors, to make a larger, checkered rectangular log.

3.Wrap the log in plastic wrap and refrigerate for one hour or up to one week.

4. Slice the cookie dough with a serrated knife and bake in the oven at 350 for 10-12 minutes

Tie-Dyed or Multicolored Slice and Bake Cookies

These multicolored slice and bake cookies have the appearance of tie-dye in a cookie with the fun arrangement of colors. They’re just as fun to make, too. For these cookies, you need at least three colors or flavors of dough.

 

  1. From the separated dough, pinch off pieces in no particular size or order, and place them on a sheet of wax paper, forming a loose log shape.
  2. Use the wax paper to form a tighter log and wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate the dough for an hour or up to one week.
  3. Slice the cookie dough with a serrated knife and bake in the oven at 350 for 10-12 minutes.

 

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