Easter Basket Cookie Cups

In today’s post: Turn refrigerated sugar cookie dough into cute little Easter baskets. Make this fun Easter treat with your kids!

These Easter basket cookies look complicated to make, but they’re really fairly simple. To keep this Easter treat super easy, use refrigerated sugar cookie dough and premade frosting. Or if you don’t mind spending a little extra time, use homemade dough and frosting (I highly recommend homemade frosting). ***You will need a mini muffin tin in order to create the Easter basket shape.***

Kids are going to love how cute these turn out!

Ingredients

This is what you’ll need to make Easter basket cookies:

• Sugar cookie dough: I used a package of Pillsbury refrigerated sugar cookie but you can also use your favorite homemade sugar cookie dough.
• Cream Cheese frosting: Feel free to use a can (or two) of prepared frosting if you like. I don’t love the flavor of canned frosting, so I used my favorite homemade cream cheese sugar cookie frosting instead (half a batch of this recipe). Homemade frosting makes these cookies taste much better, but canned frosting is easy if you’re making them for kids who probably won’t notice the difference. I like cream cheese frosting with sugar cookies, but you could also use buttercream frosting if you prefer.
• Cadbury Mini Eggs: One bag should be *just* enough for 24 cookies. You could use jelly beans if you prefer them to chocolate eggs.
• Sour Punch straw candy: You’ll use this to make basket handles. Each package has 10 straws, so you’ll want 3 packages. I found this on the candy aisle with individual candy bars. If you can’t find this, look for Airheads Filled Ropes, Mamba Magic Sticks, or Sweetarts Ropes candy.
• Green food coloring

How to Make Easter Basket Cookies

You’ll want to plan to make these cookies in two stages: first you’ll portion out and bake the sugar cookie dough, then you’ll need to let the cookies cool for about an hour before you can decorate.

Bake the Cookie Cups

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease your mini muffin tin. If you’re using refrigerated dough, break it up into the 24 portioned squares. When testing, I found that using the entire square in each mini muffin well was a bit too much dough, so I pinched a small amount of dough off of each square to eat or bake separately. Roll each piece of dough into a ball and place one in each mini muffin well. NOTE: you can roll each ball in sugar to help ensure the cookies don’t stick in the muffin tin.

If you are using homemade sugar cookie dough, use a little less than one tablespoon of dough in each muffin well.

Bake the cookies at 350 degrees for about 18 minutes, until light golden brown and set. Pay attention to the cooking time, as it will vary a bit in different ovens. Cookies will naturally rise up the side of each muffin cup and then sink in the middle as they bake, forming cups or “baskets”. Allow the sugar cookie cups to cool completely in the muffin tin, about an hour.

Add Frosting

I found the best way to remove the cookie cups from the tin was to twist them first to loosen before trying to lift them out. Some may have overflowed the muffin wells a bit. If you wish, you can use a sharp knife to trim the edges slightly. I trimmed a few of the cookies but most were just fine.

Stir a few drops of food color into the frosting to color it green. Fill the cookie cups with frosting (I used half a batch of this cream cheese frosting recipe). I used a piping bag and a star tip.

Add Eggs + Handle

Place three mini eggs on top of each cookie cup.

Separate the sour candy straws, and cut them each to 4.5 inches long. Bend each straw into a curve and tuck it down into each cookie cup to create a handle. You could even tie a small ribbon bow on each handle if you like.