Colourful Rainbow Cookies. Did you know this week is World Baking Day? However, there seems to be some confusion about the exact date. It could be the seventeenth or the twentieth. But the girls and I don’t need an excuse to bake on any day. They have been asking for a while for us to make rainbow cookies. We made them previously for a birthday and they are a firm favourite.

World Baking Day – Colourful Rainbow Cookies

Baking is almost as old as humanity. The first recipes were probably simple flat breads cooked on hot stones. The Romans ( surprisingly! ) commercialised baking and cake making was a respected profession. In Pompeii there are the ruins of over thirty commercial bakeries. The bread was a form of what we would now call sourdough.

By the Middle Ages the English had a system of complex laws regulating what could be baked and when. Bakers Guilds were established to protect members interests. Medieval recipes included tarts, puddings, and almond cakes. By the Victorian era baking was becoming heavily industrialised but flour was often bulked out with chalk, bone dust and chemicals such as alum. Fortunately, today we are lucky to have access to amazing ingredients and everyone can bake. From the simplest biscuit to elaborate cakes and desserts.

Making Colourful Rainbow Cookies

The recipe is quite easy, but you will need a few extra ingredients as well as a roll of food wrap or clingfilm. You can find food colouring in any large supermarket or specialist baking shop. I like to use a gel-based colour as you use less, and your biscuit mix is unlikely to become sticky. You will need the colours of the rainbow. However, you can mix red and yellow for orange and blue and red for purple. We cheated slightly and omitted one colour in our rainbow.

When you have made the cookie mix you need to divide it into six bowls. Start with a couple of dessert spoons in the first bowl and roughly double up in each bowl. Then mix each bowl with your food colouring.

Chill the coloured dough in the fridge for fifteen minutes and then roll the purple into a sausage shape. Roll the remaining colours out between sheets of cling film. Working in reverse order wrap the colours around the purple cookie cylinder.

You will then end up with a large rainbow cookie roll. Trim off the ends and use to make multi coloured cookies and thoroughly chill.

Carefully cut in half then slice into semi circles about 3/4 centimetre in thickness.

Spread out onto a tray with baking parchment or a silicon baking mat. Bake, as per the recipe. If you prefer a crunchy biscuit style cookie cook a little longer. Allow to cool slightly on the tray. Before transferring to a wire baking rack to cool completely.