Rick Makes Tie-Dye Cookies

[Kissed By Thunder]

We are making cookies.

Okay, let me introduce you to my babies.

We have tie-dye butter cookie,

we have minty black and white and green,

and we have fabulous fuchsia alfajores.

But today, we are gonna make this really cool

tie-dye butter cookie swirly situation.

It's really, really cool.

These are the covers of the December issue.

Tie-dye's having a moment

and so I kinda wanted to incorporate this pattern

into a cookie.

So the first thing we're gonna do

is actually make the cookie.

I have some softened butter.

I'm going to add some sugar to that, granulated sugar,

and some kosher salt.

Alright, most decorating cookies require a chill time

and I didn't really want a chill time.

I wanted you to spend time decorating the cookie,

I didn't want you to have to make a cookie

and then chill it for three hours and then cut it

and all that stuff.

We're gonna mix it, roll it, bake it, cool it down,

and then we're gonna decorate.

You know, every year I get invited to cookie swaps

and I know a lot of people do.

Let's face it, it's a competition, right?

So everybody's, you know, judging,

and certainly it's about taste and flavor,

but when you walk in the door

and see like a really beautiful cookie,

like it doesn't matter if it tastes great or not,

that beautiful showstopper cookie

is what gets all the attention

and that's the one that everyone's gonna flock to.

You know, I wanted to create cookies

that were gonna be that powerful, that iconic,

but also easy 'cause you know,

like I want a beautiful cookie,

but I don't want to spend hours on decorating one.

I wanted a really delicate crumb on this cookie,

I didn't want that like really hard snap

and so I'm actually only going to use the yolks.

It's the whites that add a lot of structure

but also gives you that little snap.

The yolks actually give you flavor,

they give you a little bit of the structure

and holding power,

but they also give you the fat.

We're gonna add that.

In the recipe, I call for either vanilla extract,

which is this, or vanilla paste, which is this.

I love vanilla paste.

You can actually see the vanilla beans

suspended in the liquid.

And you can just sub in like a one for one vanilla paste

to vanilla extract.

You would want to make sure

that everything was well blended.

So now I'm gonna add the flour.

This is just regular all-purpose flour.

You want to see the dough pull away

from the sides of the bowl on its own

and that is my cue that this dough is ready.

So I'm gonna roll this out on parchment.

I'm just gonna pat this out

and your dough should actually be pretty cool at this point.

Dust a little bit on the top just to make sure

that I'm not gonna stick.

Then just give it a little roll.

It's sticking a little bit to my pin.

If that happens to you then just flour your pin.

And you want this to be a little less

than a quarter of an inch thick.

You want it to have a little bit of heft

so it can hold the weight of the icing

but not so thick that it's just really heavy.

Alright, that looks pretty good and even.

Because there's so much going on with the actual glaze,

I want the shapes to be really simple.

I kinda just raided our little cabinet.

Alright, so this is rainbow.

Do we have the unicorn?

Let's do the unicorn.

Alright, we have two unicorns.

This one looks kinda more like a horse but whatever,

we'll do both.

It actually kinda looks more like a dinosaur

because the horn is not going straight up.

We have the cheap unicorns but that's fine.

They'll be cool once they're tie-dyed.

What I like to do to get these,

just peel off a little bit of the edge,

and I will collect all the scraps

and I will re-roll those.

And then I just take an offset

and if you floured your parchment properly,

nothing should stick and it should come right out.

Doughs that you have to chill really bug the crap out of me

'cause you know, if I want cookies,

it's probably a cookie emergency

and I need cookies right now, not four hours from now.

And you can actually put these pretty close to each other

because they're not gonna spread at all.

I mean it might, you know, move a millimeter or two,

but for the most part,

it's gonna keep it's shape.

Okay, so your scraps, you can just roll up

and just pat it, roll it, and do it again.

So these are ready to go in the oven.

So 350 degrees, middle rack, 10 to 12 minutes.

Just make sure you watch them

because they're really thin and they go from

nice and lightly golden to really deep golden

very, very quickly.

If your oven is running hot,

it's gonna go a lot quicker.

If it's running low, it may take up to 15 to 16 minutes.

Alright, it's been about 11 minutes.

Oh, these are perfect.

We've got like a nice little golden brown edge

but the cookies are still really blonde on the top.

So I'm just gonna let those sit.

I'm gonna look over at Morocco and see what he's doing.

You're not gonna be happy.

What are you making?

Think of it as like a tofu picadillo.

What?

I told you, you'd be upset.

Wait but-- I told you not

to look this way.

Well okay, well at least tell me

what chilies you're using.

Rick, I said you were gonna be upset--

Are you using chili powder? Look away.

Just look away. Oh god.

Have I taught you nothing?

Don't worry about it. Oh my god.

Alright, alright, here, just, no, Kevin, no.

We're done. Censored, censored.

Morocco no longer exists.

Tofu picadillo.

No, but really, what chilies are you using?

No, seriously-- You're not using chili?

I can't tell you, I can't tell you.

I can't, I don't even know what to do.

Tommy, cut, I'm gonna go home, we're done.

[beep]

So when we actually started working on the cookie recipe,

one of the things I was pretty adamant about is

not using food color.

Like, I wanted to find a natural food color

and so I stumbled across this brand.

This is Suncore.

These are actually all natural dehydrated and pulverized

fruits and vegetables and berries.

And so these were my favorite colors that I liked

and so the ones that I used for these cookies,

but you could whatever combination that you want.

So I'm gonna make a big batch of the glaze

and so I've got five cups of powdered sugar.

To that, I'm going to add some milk.

I'm also adding a little salt.

You'll taste more of the milk

as a result of adding the salt in there.

I'm gonna give this a little vigorous whisk

just to make sure that I don't have any clumps

of the powdered sugar.

I am just going to eyeball this and divide it into four.

So I'm gonna do four colors

and I'm gonna leave one little batch of the white.

I would definitely start with a teaspoon at a time.

This is butterfly pea blue.

If you have a little whisk, that might be good as well

to just kind of like really stir it in.

Otherwise, just get in there with your spoon and go to town.

Look at that.

[laughing]

This is actually my favorite.

I really love this pink.

This is the dragon fruit pink, it's really intense.

Alright, and then this red beetroot powder.

The other thing that I found is that

when you dip the cookies in the glaze,

if there is a little patch of the powder left,

it actually makes a cool pattern.

This is the purple sweet potato.

And that's another thing that I like

about all of these powders

is that it's a really subtle flavor.

It's not gonna overpower the cookie.

At least you know that it's natural and not synthetic.

So this is our color palette.

Oh look Gaby, here, I made you a dye.

Not for my hair.

Oh wait, you might be able to put this in your hair

'cause it's natural.

Why would I do that?

Alright, we are ready to decorate.

This to me is the easiest way to do this

and also, it's very, very forgiving.

If you make a mistake, you can actually just

wipe the glaze right off the cookie and start over again.

I'm gonna put a little bit of the white glaze on the plate

and then it's cool to just kind of streak it, drop it,

pretend you're a painter.

Do a little bit of red 'cause I'm feeling saucy.

And a little blue.

Gonna push it in gently and then lift

and just let it kind of smooth itself out.

You can see there's a few pockets

of the unmixed food coloring and that's fine too.

If you want, you can kind of push the color

to the edge of the cookie.

But I'm actually pretty into this little swirl pattern.

What I found is that you can continue to use

this little pattern for two more cookies

before it just gets too swirled

and the colors will actually start to blend

and mix together.

I'm actually pretty happy with the way that looks.

I love this little vein of blue in there,

I think it's really cool.

If you didn't want to use any white at all,

choose one color that's maybe

a little bit lighter and less intense,

just so you have a nice contrast between

a dark and a light.

I'm gonna do my unicorn.

Just drop it in.

Make sure that all the cookie is getting

in contact with the glaze.

And then carefully lift.

That's really cool.

I'm really into that.

I really like this technique.

It's like super easy,

you kinda don't know what's gonna happen,

and also, when you pull it up,

you get those really cool streaks.

I can guarantee you no one is going to have

tie-dye cookies at the cookie swap,

well until they get their issue of Bon Appetit,

and then everybody will.

I'm gonna put unicorn on the very top

'cause I like that unicorn.

And that is how you win the cookie swap.

I really like that unicorn.

I should name him.

This is Enrique.

Unicorn Michael.

These are gorgeous, first of all.

It's the kinda cookie that I like don't want to eat

'cause I don't want to ruin it.

But you should just eat it. But I should probably

just eat it. Yeah, yeah.

I think I'm gonna eat it too.

Very good.

You ready, Morocco?

Yep, coming in real hot in a second.

Real hot.

I'm coming in really sweet.

What have you got for me?

Yeah, it's for you, bud.

Wow, awesome.

And I have an unglazed cookie.

[gasps] Thank you. I know.

I know how you hate sugar.

[laughing]

I really like that cookie.

And actually, I mean, in terms of preference for eating,

I like it just like that without any glaze.

Did you use paste in this?

I did, I'm not a monster, come on.

Alright, I'm gonna taste this.

I ate the whole thing, by the way.

Oh god, you did.

Well, thanks for my lunch.

Okay, yeah, you got it now.

Actually, like this is two of my favorite things in life,

sweet and spicy.

So thank you, Morocco, for my little spicy lunch

and thank me for this yummy cookie and Happy Holidays.

Make these cookies, win the cookie swap.

[rock music]