Kottonmouth Kookies (Legal Version)

Serves 25

In celebration of April 20th, I decided to come up with a sweet little cookie sure to keep you in the spirit of the holiday. This leaf-shaped green sugar cookie is sure to leave your mouth dry and your spirits high! This tasty treat is best enjoyed with friends in a circle. For this recipe you’ll need a leaf-shaped cookie cutter, like the one I bought from Stonerware. The guys at Stonerware must be botanists, they like plants so much!

You will need:

• 1 rolling pin
• 1 leaf-shaped cookie cutter
• 1 lightly greased cookie sheet
• 2 sheets of wax paper
• 1 teaspoon
• 1 pair of disposable latex gloves
• 1 cooling rack
• 1 mixing bowl
• At least 25 small disposable zipper storage bags (optional)

Ingredients:

• 1 18 oz. tube of sugar cookie dough
• 2 1/2 teaspoons of green food coloring
• At least 2 oz. of green sugar crystals

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Because you’re going to shape the dough and not just slice little discs of dough from the tube, it’s best to simply cut open the tube and squeeze the dough into a mixing bowl. Get your latex gloves ready, because this is where it gets too messy, even for me! Put on your gloves and add the green food coloring to the dough. Knead the dough until it is completely green. Place a sheet of wax paper on a stable flat surface and position your green glob of dough on it.

Remove the gloves and cover the glob with a second sheet of wax paper so the dough won’t stick to the rolling pin or the flat surface. Push the wax paper-covered dough down with your hand when you flatten it to about one half inch thick. Make sure the rolling pin rolls the dough horizontally as well as vertically so the dough isn’t stretched out into some oval shape. To do this, simply turn the wax paper and dough 90 degrees in either direction and roll the pin in the same vertical motion.

Once flattened, peel the top layer of wax paper off and firmly push the cutter down into the dough. Lightly grease the cookie sheet with cooking oil and place the shaped cookies on it. If the dough seems to be sticking to the cutter, gently push the dough out of the cutter with your fingers. When you run out of available space on the dough for your cutter, simply join together all the excess dough, cover it with second wax paper and flatten it again with the rolling pin. Keep this up until you have run out of unshaped cookie dough.

In the event that you end up with a piece of dough that is not big enough for the cookie cutter, simply roll it up in to a ball and slap it on the sheet with the rest of the cookies. After the cookies are baked, gobble up that little green cookie ball so no one else will ever know of its existence.

For more detailed instructions on how to roll dough and shape cookies, check out my new instructional video.

Sprinkle the green sugar crystals onto the shaped dough until the surface of the dough is completely covered. For chewy cookies leave them in the oven for about 8 to 10 minutes. But if you like your cookies with a crunch then keep them in for about 10 to 12 minutes. Let the cookies cool on the sheet or on a plate before storing them away or the cookies will stick together. I usually store my cookies in a tin with wax paper between them. The cookies should hold up for about two weeks or so, but kottonmouth kookies may end up being consumed before April 21!

If you want you can place each cookie in an appropriately-sized "baggie". Be sure to drink lots of water with your cookies. And remember, when handling a plate full of Kottonmouth Kookies among friends, munch, munch, pass!