Recipe: Soft Sprinkle Sugar Cookies

I knew I wanted to bake cookies this past weekend, but since I haven't been home in over a month, I didn't have any special ingredients in the house. But I didn't want to bake chocolate chip cookies; I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I don't really like them and think they're boring. But I did already have sprinkles in the pantry, so I thought I'd make sprinkle cookies. 

I googled "easy sprinkle cookies" and this was the first recipe that popped up. Any cookie recipe with the word "soft" in the title is good by me! I'm not sure I had made any recipes from the Celebrating Sweets blog before, but I was up for trying this one. 

Ingredients

• 1 ½ cups all purpose flour
• 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• ½ cup unsalted butter, softened to cool room temp
• ¾ cup granulated sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 ½ teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• ¼ teaspoon almond extract, optional
• ¾ cup sprinkles

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
• In a bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
• Using a hand mixer or stand mixer, beat butter until smooth. Slowly pour in the sugar, mixing as you pour. Beat sugar and butter for a minute, until light and fluffy. Add egg, vanilla extract, and almond extract, mixing until combined and scraping the sides of the bowl as needed. Add in flour mixture and mix until just combined. Add ½ cup sprinkles and stir by hand until combined.
• Scoop a heaping tablespoon of dough and roll into a ball (or use a 1 ½ tablespoon scoop). Place ¼ cup sprinkles on a plate and press the tops of the dough balls in additional sprinkles (optional). Place dough balls onto prepared baking sheet leaving about an inch for spreading. 
• Bake for 8-10 minutes. The edges should be completely set, and the centers should look slightly under cooked, they will finish cooking while cooling on the baking sheet.
• Place the baking sheets on wire racks to cool. Repeat with remaining dough once the baking sheets are completely cool.

Very easy recipe, and SO YUMMY! These cookies turned out just as I had hope. I frequently have the bad habit of waiting until cookies start to get golden, but that would have meant these were overdone. So I only did 8 minutes, and that was perfect! I did not put sprinkles on the outside, and even though the website said specifically not to melt the butter, mine was mostly melted and it worked out fine. I also made the cookies probably half the size, just so I could get more of them (and even then I only ended up with 25). Very quick to make; I would totally make this recipe again!