FOOD

Adorable and incredibly easy: Make spring chicken cookies for Easter

Christina Haller
Grateful
The kids will love decorating these Spring chicken Easter cookies.

With only a few ingredients, you’ll be enjoying these festive and citrusy cookies – flavored with Orangesicle or Orange Supreme cake mix – in just minutes. Don’t have that flavor handy? No problem – lemon will work just as well.

The kids will have a blast helping you to decorate the cute baby chicken faces, too. They’re also so much less expensive than store-bought cookies. (We guess you could call them cheep.)

Just press a couple of candy eyes and mini Starburst candy beaks onto these easy-to-make, yellow-frosted cookies, and share them with co-workers, classmates and friends. These holiday treats will surely entertain.

Easter brunch made simple:8-ingredient quiche Lorraine

Spring chicken Easter cookies 

Makes: 24 cookies

Ingredients:

  • 1 package Orangesicle Cake Mix
  • ¾ cup shortening
  • ½ teaspoon orange extract
  • 2 eggs
  • Frosting
  • 1 container pre-made vanilla frosting
  • 4 drops yellow food coloring
  • 1 package (0.88 oz) Wilton Candy Eyeballs
  • 1 package Starburst minis

Instructions:

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Mix together the cake mix, shortening, orange extract and eggs until thoroughly combined.
  2. Using your hands, roll cookie dough into balls about 1½ inch diameter (the size of large melon balls).
  3. Place on a greased cookie sheet or use a Silpat baking mat.
  4. Bake for 8-9 minutes until the edges just begin to turn brown.
  5. Let cool on the cookie sheet before frosting.
  6. To make the frosting, empty the can of vanilla frosting into a bowl and add the yellow food coloring. Mix well. Frost each cookie generously with the yellow icing.
  7. To make the orange beak, take an orange mini Starburst and cut it on the diagonal most of the way through. Fold candy back up to form a beak. Place it in the middle of the cookie and then add the candy eyes above it. I used other mini Starburst cut in half for the top of the chicken’s head.

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