Scrap Sugar Cookie Dough and Bulk Sprinkles

I hate being wasteful. I feel guilty not eating leftovers and leaving thing in the freezer too long so that they become recognizable. I feel compelled to recycle and bring my plastic bags back to the store. Maybe I watched too much Captain Planet as a kid or maybe I'm just weird, so humor me. 


Have you had those moments when you're almost done with the sugar cookie dough but the scraps wont stick together enough to roll it out again? Since I hate to waste anything, I'll share how I use every last piece of dough and make something very tasty!


On another note, I also hate paying full price for anything. I will stock up on butter when I find a good coupon and sale. The same goes for sprinkles. I buy my sprinkles on Amazon, not that they offer sales or coupons, but they do sell sprinkles in bulk! You can buy 16oz of sprinkles for a little more than a small container of sprinkles at the grocery store. 
*Tip - Check the bakery section at the grocery store after a major holiday. Many times, I've found bulk sprinkles the bakery purchased for holidays that they didn't end up using. This is how I now have twice as many red and pink sprinkles after Valentine's Day than I did before Christmas.

What I love about buying the sprinkles in bulk is that you can create your own custom mix of colors without paying extra for someone to mix them for you. Many colors work for multiple holidays, example Red Sprinkles are used for Valentine's day, 4th of July, and Christmas.  I currently have some leftover custom mix I made for Easter (white, pink, yellow, blue, and green) that I couldn't bear to throw away so I keep it for times like these.

So now that we've covered that, let's start with the cookie dough scraps and sprinkle mix.

Once the sugar cookie dough has incorporated a lot of flour after multiple roll outs, it tends to be uncooperative when trying to roll out. When this happens, I like to take the remaining dough and turn it into small quarter sized balls. Then grab a wet paper towel and the leftover sprinkles. Gently roll the balled dough on the wet paper town to moisten the outside of the dough. It will begin to feel sticky. At this point, roll it in the bowl of sprinkles. The sprinkles will begin to stick to the outside.

Once the ball is covered, place it on the parchment paper covered baking sheet (I always use parchment paper, less cleanup and no burned sprinkles on the pan. Can you tell I reused the parchment paper from the sugar cookie cutouts?).

Bake per your recipe's directions and be cautious of eating the cookies before they're cool. Since the sprinkles are mostly sugar, they are very hot once out of the oven.

The scrap cookie's I've made tend to keep their shape so keep an eye on them while baking since they wont flatten and you can't see them browning on the edges.

Enjoy!