Pina Colada Cutout Sugar Cookie Recipe

I have always loved the combination of pineapple and coconut and love drinking virgin Pina Coladas. Putting them together into a cookie was a no brainer.  Since summer time is upon us, a Pina Colada Cookie seemed like the perfect flavor combination for fun summer cookies

My husband is always my food taster and I mostly trust his opinion on sweets.  After tasting these cookies, he said I can no longer make a plain sugar cookie again.  Truth be told, I was surprised at how much I liked these cookies too.  I think coconut cookies are okay, but they are usually dry and extra crunchy.  Since these have the added pineapple sweetness, the coconut flavor tastes that much better.  I still thought they tasted more like coconut, but my husband thought the pineapple flavor was stronger.  Either way, they are delicious cookies that are worth your time to make.

You should always remember to take your butter out early to make it close to room temperature. I actually remembered to take my butter out early, but I took out salted butter as opposed to unsalted butter.  Ooops....I know there are a lot of bakers who will scoff at the idea of using salted butter in a recipe.  However, I am not one of those people.  I usually use unsalted butter for sugar cookies, but I use salted butter for everything else.  I've never noticed a difference in consistency with the extra water it's supposed to have and I don't mind my desserts a little more salty.  So I used salted butter in my sugar cookies this time, (even though I wrote unsalted butter in the recipe) but I did not add any salt to my dough. I will say it now, I did not notice any difference in consistency for my cookies by using salted butter.

The flavoring for the cookie dough and royal icing recipe I used were the LorAnn Oils Super Strength Flavoring.  They come in teeny tiny little bottles.  I got a whole bunch of flavors at once from Amazon and it came with a little dram dropper. From the measurement I took, 12 drops from the dropper was 1/8 tsp.  So a tiny bit of flavoring goes a very far way. You can use different brands of flavoring, but may need to experiment on quantity to get a good balance between pineapple and coconut.

Prepare your dough as the recipe says.  I always roll my dough out between two pieces of parchment paper.

Sometimes the top parchment paper gets a little stuck. You can add flour, but I usually just pull it off the dough every once in a while so it rolls out well.

I rolled my dough out to 1/4" thickness. Look at all that beautiful coconut in your dough.

 Cutting out dough with coconut does not give the cleanest cut and sometimes will mess up the shape of your cookie.  My cookies all ended up fine, but a different shape or coconut not cut up enough may pull out your dough too much and lose the shape.

 

I wish I could say there was an easy way to clean up your cookies, but there really isn't.  I very gently used a turkey lancer (you can use a toothpick or scribe tool) to pull out the coconut.  The pieces that were longer and didn't easily pull out, I pushed onto the side of the cookie.

After the cookies were baked, I gently rubbed downward on the edge of my cookie and broke off the cooked coconut that I had missed.

A side story to these cookies, for the first time in my life I managed to start a fire in my kitchen. I always leave my cutout cookies on the parchment paper I roll them out on and then put them on the bottom side of a baking pan so that they cook more evenly.  Well, as a rushed mom trying to get more done than she should, I was putting my tired one year old down for a nap, knowing my cookie timer was about to go off.  So I rushed back downstairs and quickly pulled my cookie pan out of the oven way too fast.  The parchment paper came sliding off the pan with the cookies and landed on the bottom baking element.  This is when I discovered that parchment paper is extremely flammable...It burst into flames. I blew it out thinking that was all I needed to do and proceeded to grab the other cookies that were burning on the baking element, but of course the red embers on the parchment paper went back up into flames.  In the moment, I didn't know what to do, so I grabbed the edge of the parchment paper and managed to throw it into the sink and get water on to it.  I was sooooo lucky the parchment paper didn't break while I moved it and fall on my feet. I was also lucky my two older kids were outside playing and didn't get hurt. I will now try to move slower while cooking. Note to self, if there is a fire, don't try to move it.  Throw water, flour, or cover with pan so it doesn't spread!!! Or just use the fire extinguisher I had available to me under my kitchen sink 1 foot away. We don't always do the smartest things when we are panicked.

Back to the cookies.....

Bake all your cookies and use whatever Royal Icing Recipe you like the best with the added Pineapple and Coconut flavorings. I prefer the recipes that use Light Corn Syrup in them.  I feel like they turn up shinier, sweeter (which I love), have less air bubbles, and aren't as gritty as meringue powder.  The negative to using Light Corn Syrup is that you can't get as stiff an icing as meringue powder or egg white icings.  You can still get something thicker than an outline consistency, but if you are looking to get it whipped up as stiff as the other recipes, I've never successfully been able to do it.

For my icing I got really lazy and mixed it up to a 10 second fill consistency. I didn't feel like messing around with consistencies. Normally I would do an outline consistency for the detail on top of the cookies, but I was pressed for time and decided to cut corners on this one.

Look at that smooth consistency.

I tasted the icing and it tasted very strong of pineapple and I thought I wasn't going to like it. But I had made it and decided to use it and adjust the flavoring later. I ended up trying the cookie with the icing half way dried and it was still too sweet of a pineapple flavor.  But the next day, when the icing was completely dry, the cookies tasted great and the pineapple, coconut flavoring was well balanced.  I ended up eating three they were so tasty to me. So keep in mind the flavoring will settle down over time.

Once I make my icing, I separate it into different bowls for all the colors that I need. I don't put an even amount in each bowl, but separate based on how much I need for each color and cover the bowl with saran wrap so it doesn't crust over.

I use to use squeeze bottles to decorate my cookies, but I was always stuck with the two tip sizes the squeeze bottles offered.  Plus they were difficult to squeeze and my hand would get pain in it from squeezing the bottles so hard.  Not to mention how annoying they are to clean out.  So this time I decided to use pastry bags with tips. It was so much easier to deal with.

I used a coupler with a tip attached and put my bag in a tall cup with a wet paper towel on the bottom.  It was very easy to fill.

 Finally I decorated my cookies, which is the fun part.

Here's a picture walk through of how I decorated my cookies.

Coconut Cup first:

 

It was a very hot day, and I discovered my icing was crusting over in less than a minute. So I went from outlining everything at once, to outlining and filling each cookie one at a time.

Make sure the umbrella stick dries before adding the brown for the coconut.

 

Let everything dry before adding the detail on the umbrella and straw.

Next is the Pineapple:

Let dry before adding the detail.

I know my cookies aren't perfect looking because I'm not a talented cookie decorator, but they were fun to make and sure tasted great. 

 

Pina Colada Cutout Sugar Cookie Recipe

Cookie Dough Ingredients

(makes about 3.5 dozen medium size cookies rolled to 1/4" thickness)

• 2 sticks unsalted butter (room temperature)
• 1 C sugar
• 2 eggs
• 16 drops from dram dropper LorAnn Oils Super Strength Pineapple Flavoring (Or other brand flavoring, quantity will need to be adjusted depending on strength)
• 6 drops from dram dropper LorAnn Oils Super Strength Coconut Flavoring (Or other brand flavoring, quantity will need to be adjusted depending on strength)
• 3 C flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 C coconut, sweetened (chopped up with 4 Tbsp powdered sugar from below)
• 4 Tbsp powdered sugar

Glaze Icing Ingredients

(covers about 5 dozen medium size cookies, can be cut in half)

• 2 lbs powdered sugar
• 5 Tbsp Light Corn Syrup
• 6 drops LorAnn Oils Super Strength Pineapple Flavoring (Or other brand flavoring, quantity will need to be adjusted depending on strength)
• 6 drops LorAnn Oils Super Strength Coconut Flavoring (Or other brand flavoring, quantity will need to be adjusted depending on strength)
• 1-8 Tbsp water (depending on desired consistency)
• Food Coloring Gel needed for cookies you are decorating

Cookie Dough Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
2. In a large bowl, or mixer, cream butter and sugar together.  Add pineapple flavoring, coconut flavoring, and eggs. Mix until combined.
3. Add flour and salt and mix until well combined.
4. Chop up coconut with 4 Tbsp powdered sugar. The powdered sugar will help separate the coconut so it doesn't stick together so much. The more finely chopped, the cleaner cut your cutout cookie will have.
5. Add coconut to cookie dough and mix until combined.
6. Drop dough onto parchment paper. Cover dough with another piece of parchment paper.
7. Roll dough out to 1/4" thickness.
8. With any cookie cutter you like, cut out cookies.  Carefully remove excess dough. Clean up coconut on edge of cookies.
9. Place cookies onto parchment covered cookie sheet.
10. Bake at 375 degrees F for 7-11 minutes until edges just barely start to brown.
11. Remove from oven and let cookies cool completely on racks.

Glaze Icing Instructions

1.  Add powdered sugar, corn syrup, pineapple flavoring and coconut flavoring to mixing bowl. Add 1 Tbsp water and begin to mix on slow speed.
2. Mix for one minute and keep adding 1 Tbsp water, mixing between each Tbsp until you get your desired consistency.  Increase mixing speed as soon as powdered sugar is wet. Mix until everything is well combined. (Note: 8 Tbsp of water will bring icing to approximately a 8-10 second fill consistency. This consistency will ooze off the cookie if you don't have a thicker consistency to outline with. If icing gets too thin, add sifted powdered sugar. If you've never made glaze/royal icing, watch lots of videos to understand consistency requirements.)

Ice your cookies.  Wait for them to dry and enjoy the taste of summer!!