I had sugar cookie dough left over from a different project, so I decided to make maple leaf cookies. I found a plastic maple leaf cookie cutter at Hobby Lobby for 75 cents. My five-year-old rolled out the dough, and the kids took turns cutting out their leaves with the cookie cutter.
After baking and cooling the cookies, I mixed up some autumn-colored frosting. I put lots of yellow food coloring into white frosting to make the burnt orange color. (Use professional food coloring – it’s much brighter than what you dye Easter eggs with.) For the maroon color, I looked at the food coloring and realized I had no red. I used lots of hot pink. My husband walked past, and I asked him what color to add to make the pink color turn into maroon? He said blue. For a minute I thought it was going to turn brown. (I should have just used chocolate frosting then!) But after mixing it some more (and throwing in some cocoa powder), I saw a lovely maroon color. I dusted the cookies with cocoa powder.
This is a great baking activity to do in the autumn, since maple leaf cookies reflect what is happening in nature. I love how these maple leaf cookies turned out!
