Nightmare Before Christmas Sally Sugar Cookies are a fun Halloween dessert recipe! These colored sugar cookies are made to look like patchwork from Sally's dress in the popular movie. A fun fandom recipe for movie night.
Preheat oven to 350°F with a rack in the middle position.
Put 1/2 cup of the sugar in a small, shallow bowl for later. Set aside.
2 cups sugar
Line two baking sheets with either silicone baking mats or parchment paper.
In a bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt.
2 ½ cups all-purpose flour, ½ teaspoon baking powder, ½ teaspoon salt
In the bowl of a stand mixer (or large bowl with hand mixer) on medium speed beat together the softened butter and remaining 1.5 cups sugar until light and fluffy, 4-5 minutes.
14 Tablespoons unsalted butter, 2 cups sugar
Add the vanilla and eggs, one at time, to fully incorporate, about 30-60 seconds. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.
2 teaspoons vanilla extract, 2 large eggs
Slowly add the flour mixture while mixing to incorporate.
Separate the dough into four different bowls. To each bowl, start with 3 drops of food coloring and mix with a spoon to combine. Add more coloring if desired as needed.I went with pink, yellow, light blue, and purple. Use any colors as desired.
food coloring
Scoop 1/2 Tablespoon of each of the 4 colors and combine to roll into a ball, gently, so you can still see each color but they are all stuck together.
Once in a ball shape, gently press to make a disk approximately 3/4 inch thick.
Roll the dough disk in the small dish of sugar from step 1 to fully coat.
Place the sugar coated dough disks on the baking sheets approximately 2 inches apart (about 12 per sheet).
When the first sheet is full, bake in the oven for approximately 10 minutes. Rotate the baking sheet half way through.Continue making the cookies for the 2nd sheet while the 1st is baking.
Let the cookies sit on the sheet for 7-10 minutes before removing and finishing cooling on a cooling rack.
Once completely cool, use the black icing to make stitches across the areas where the colors change on the cookies. Do as many or few as desired, both lines and crosses.
black icing
Store in an air tight container for up to a week.
Notes
Use the food colorings to make pink, yellow, blue, and purple dough. You can also use different colors and/or food gel for deeper and brighter colors. Purple can be difficult to make by mixing, so consider a food gel or pre-made purple food coloring instead of using red and blue together.
This makes rather large cookies. For smaller cookies, use approximately 1/4 Tablespoon of each dough color per cookie.
For crispy cookies, cook longer.
For softer cookies, chill dough for 30 minutes before baking. These cookies are somewhat soft as-is.