Spring Cake Mix Cookies

Oh how we love cake mix cookies! They are an easy alternative to traditional sugar cookies, just use your favorite boxed cake and you'll have yourself some delicious Spring Cake Mix Cookies. Usually I just make the cookies in “drop cookie” style so we end up with yummy plain jane round cookie happiness. But I recently discovered we can use this same recipe to make cut out cookies and they are delicious. For this recipe, I used a basic yellow cake mix and a store bought can of white decorating frosting with a small round tip. You can, however, make your own frosting if you prefer. Get ready, cake mix cookies are the best!

Ingredients:

1 package of cake mix
1 large egg
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup oil
Food coloring
Frosting
Sprinkles and other decorations

Tools and supplies:

Rolling pin
Heart shaped cookie cutter
Parchment paper
Plastic wrap
Cookie sheet
Toothpicks

How to make cute spring cake mix cookies:

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and mix until blended.
Divide into 2 equal amounts, mix in food coloring of your choice to each amount. You can make more than 2 colors if you prefer. We used blue and red. To get pastel colors, use very little food coloring.
Roll into a ball, wrap with plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator for at least one hour.
Make butterfly shapes – Roll out dough on parchment paper. Cut into heart shapes for butterfly wings. Roll small “snake” shapes to use as butterfly bodies. Assemble pieces and make sure dough is touching for each individual butterfly. Use a tooth pick to make dotted line accents.
Bake at 350°F for 12-15 minutes of until done (some flavors of cake won’t turn golden brown).
Allow to cool, then decorate with frosting and sprinkles of your choice.
Makes approx. 2 dozen.

Tip: I prefer to use parchment paper instead of flouring my work surface or placing cookies on a greased cookie sheet. However, if you don't have parchment paper, lightly flour your work surface before rolling out the dough and make sure to lightly grease your cookie sheets before baking.

Don't forget to allow time to chill your dough. When first mixed, the dough is pretty soft, so chilling it a bit makes it a little bit easier to work with when trying to make cut outs with it.

You can create a variety of butterflies just by using different colors and different sized heart shape cookie cutters. Stakc the different colors and alternate sizes. Decorate with frosting and sprinkles to dress up your butterflies or go with “o-naturale” cookies like we did.

What I love most about this recipe is how easy cake mix cookies are to make. There are so many yummy flavors to choose from, the kids love to help and it's not a long drawn out process. So it's a perfect quick family activity. Once baked, the cookies are slightly chewing, much like a regular sugar cookie but with a bit different flavor.

Check out more yummy cake mix cookie ideas.

I'd love to hear what kind of spring treats you're making!