Super Easy Painted Christmas Cookies

I love making (and eating) Christmas cookies but with three small kids, this activity usually turns daunting and overwhelming pretty easily.  If I make cookies that involve icing, the kids get to turn into little artists but the icing is hard for them to use and makes a huge mess. If I choose drop cookies or something that doesn't need icing, the kids don't really get to do much. So I turned to google the other day and found a couple recipes for painted cookies.  After tweaking them a bit based on what I had in the pantry, we got to work tonight.  This was such a FUN, EASY, and BEAUTIFUL cookie experience.  There was little to no stress and everyone was happy.  My kitchen even stayed a little cleaner than normal.

So here goes, first you make sugar cookies.  I cheated and used a boxed mix that I found on sale a couple months ago for less than a dollar.  We rolled them all out and cut out all the shapes.

As I filled a cookie sheet with shapes, we put them in the fridge to keep a bit better.  When they were all cut, we got to work on the decorating part.  Here is the best part- it's 2 ingredients!  I took a mini muffin pan (an ice cube tray works well too) and poured evaporated milk in each little spot.  The I added different colors of food coloring to each little area and mixed well with a toothpick.  Since I had both the regular and the gel coloring, we tried both.  They both worked really well.

 Each child got a small clean paintbrush and a plate full of UNBAKED cookies.  They painted all of them and then we threw them in the oven for a few minutes based on the box instructions.  Presto!  Fantastic, totally kid friendly, cookies.