Ever since I saw the candy cane cookies on Pinterest I just had to try them. It has a distinct Christmas theme and they look colorful and easy. To my surprise they weren’t as easy as I thought they would be. Overall my whole weekend of baking was a disaster. Nothing came out as I wanted it to. First my inside out chocolate chip cookies came out flat. My dough for the candy canes were too dry and every time I rolled it, it broke into pieces. So I went with an easy recipe that I know would work. Admittedly rolling this dough was also not as easy as I thought but it eventually came out the right way.

For the Candy Cane cookies I used the same shortbread recipe that I used for the Raspberry Thumbprint cookies.

Ingredients

1 cup (230g) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
2/3 cup (134g) granulated sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon rum extract/almond extract ( depending on your choice)
2 cups (264g) all-purpose flour

Directions

First cream the butter until soft then add the sugar and extracts and mix further until creamy and light in color. I don’t have a hand mixer so I just used a spoon and mixed it together.
Then mix the flour with the wet mixture until the dough is soft and flaky.
Chill in the fridge for 3 hours.
After 3 hours take the dough out of the fridge and let it stand outside for 20-30 minutes. ( If the dough is too flaky just knead small amounts in your hand until it form a solid ball.)
Take half of the dough and knead red food coloring into it. Its pretty messy with your hand but for me it was the best way to mix the color into the dough
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius
Take 2 teaspoons of dough of each color and roll each one out separately
Then roll them together. Lay them out in the shape of a candy cane on a baking sheet
Bake for 14 minutes.
Take them out of the oven and let them cool for a few minutes before moving them to a wire rack