Button Cookies

image & recipe @spoonful.com

What you'll need

• Batch of sugar cookie dough (homemade or store bought)
• Food coloring
• Plastic kitchen gloves (for kneading food coloring into the dough)
• Rolling pin
• Flour
• Wax paper
• Small round cookie or fondant cutters (about 2 1/4 inches wide)
• Small bottle cap (slightly smaller than the fondant cutter)
• Wooden kitchen skewer
• Spatula
• Baking sheet
• Wire rack

How to make it

1. Divide the dough into thirds or quarters. Then knead a different shade of food coloring into each portion of dough. Chill the dough so that it will be stiff enough to hold its shape while baking.
2. When you're ready to start baking, work with one color of dough at a time. Roll the dough out to about a 1/4-inch thickness and use the cookie or fondant cutter to cut out a bunch of small circles. If you like, use a small bottle cap to gently imprint an inner circle on some or all of the buttons.
3. Use the blunt end of the kitchen skewer to make a set of two or four buttonholes in the center of each cookie.
4. Place the cookies on a baking sheet and bake them according to the recipe directions. Transfer the baked cookies to a wire rack to cool before serving. Enjoy!

Fawn's Leapfrog Cupcakes

image & recipe @spoonful.com

What you'll need

• Batch of baked cupcakes
• Frosting tinted "frog" green
• Small tube of white decorating frosting or cookie icing
• Small candy eyes (look for them in the baking aisle at large craft or department stores)
• White candy melts
• Green or sour apple-flavored gummy ring-style candies
• Kitchen scissors

How to make it

1. Frost the cupcakes green.
2. 
   For each frog, create a pair of large eyeballs by using dots of decorating frosting or 
   icing to stick candy eyes to the centers of white Candy Melts, as shown. 
   Set the eyeballs aside until the icing hardens and holds.
3. 
   Cut a gummy ring candy in half to create two green "eye sockets."
4. Gently press the cut ends of each pair of gummy rings down into a frosted cupcake top, positioning them side-by-side just a bit in front of the center. Place a candy eyeball right in front of each socket, again gently pushing the lower edge into the frosting.