The Saturday after election day, my husband and I walked to the farmer's market in the morning and then had lunch at a nearby restaurant (eating outdoors, of course; we have not eaten indoors at a restaurant since March). Fortunately, it was warm and sunny and a beautiful day to be outside. As we were enjoying lunch, I started hearing loud cheers from people at the farmers market (which was less than a block away) and then a lot of car horns honking. It took me a moment, but I quickly grasped what was happening: Biden had been declared President-elect. The mood in DC -- where Biden captured 93% of the vote -- was jubilant for the rest of the day. Spontaneous celebrations popped up all around town. I had no idea so many people owned cowbells until I saw folks ringing them in the street. Other people were banging on pots and pans. The cheering and car honking continued for hours.
I came home in a celebratory mood and as I planned out my baking for the week, I decided that I should make something with a lot of rainbow sprinkles. I thought about making Christina Tosi's Funfetti Cookies, but then decided to try a new recipe: Erin Clarkson's Vanilla Bean Sprinkle Sugar Cookies.
The recipe is no fuss. You cream softened butter with sugar until light and fluffy; add egg and vanilla (I used vanilla paste); add flour sifted with salt and baking soda; and mix in sprinkles. I used rainbow jimmies that I purchase from nuts.com by the pound. The recipe notes that using jimmies (the long, rod-like sprinkles) results in thinner cookies compared to using confetti sprinkles (the ones that look like flat discs), and suggests adjusting the amount of flour upward to get a thicker cookie if you use jimmies. I didn't bother and used the original amount of flour specified.
You can bake the dough immediately. I used a #30 scoop to portion out the dough and I got 24 cookies from a batch. The recipe instructs you to roll the cookies in granulated sugar before baking, but I decided to use sanding sugar instead. It has significantly larger grains than granulated sugar, but is smaller than coarse sugar. I'm glad I used the sanding sugar, because it gave the cookies a beautiful sparkly quality (even though it's difficult to see in photo above) and a very satisfying crunch.
These cookies were sweet and soft and chewy, with a strong vanilla flavor. I wouldn't say the flavor was particularly complex or interesting, but it was extremely satisfying. And I was happy with the thickness of my cookies, even without adding any extra flour.
Even now, just looking at the photo of these rainbow flecked, sparkling cookies brings me joy. I think they perfectly captured my exuberant mood at the time I made them.
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