Jelly Belly Cookie Boxes

Course: Cookies, Dessert

Cuisine: American

Keyword: easter cookies, jelly belly cookie boxes, sugar cookies

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Cook Time: 11 minutes

Total Time: 41 minutes

Servings:

Calories: 1153kcal

These adorable Jelly Belly Cookie Boxes are made with our famous sugar cookies and decorated with a simple royal icing. Colorful jelly beans turn these cookie boxes into works of art that are perfect for Spring and Easter!

Print Recipe

Ingredients

Sugar Cookies

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon good quality salt
1 cup unsalted butter 2 sticks, room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Royal Icing

4 tablespoons meringue powder
4 cups powdered sugar about 1 pound
6 tablespoons warm water plus additional if needed

Decorations

jelly beans jelly belly if you can find them

Instructions

Sugar Cookies

In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder and salt, and set aside.
In the bowl of an electric mixer, using the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. This should take 2-3 minutes.
Add the egg and vanilla and beat another minute or so.
Add the flour mixture slowly. (Be careful not to add too much at a time or you will have a snowstorm of flour.)
Blend until all of the flour is incorporated. The mixture will look crumbly at first but just keep blending until the dough begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl.
Remove about half of the dough from the bowl and knead by hand just a bit to form a smooth ball. Roll out dough onto a lightly floured work surface, or onto a piece of plastic wrap.
Cut out circles using your larger circle cutter. For each finished cookie box you'll need 4 circle cookies. I used a 2.5" round cookie cutter, but feel free to adjust the size as you wish. Place entire baking sheet of unbaked cookies into the freezer for 5 minutes.
Preheat oven to 350°F and bake cookies in preheated oven for 9 to 11 minutes, depending on the size and thickness of your cookies. Bake the cookies WHOLE (do not cut out the centers until after the cookies are baked).
The cookies are baked when then are no longer shinny on top, but they will not show much of any change in color.
As soon as the cookies are baked and you have removed them from the oven (but they are still hot) use the smaller circle to cut into the center of HALF of your cookies. Cut through the dough with the smaller cutter, but do not touch the cookies (leave the cutout center in place). Allow the cookies to cool a minute or two on the baking sheet, then use a spatula to carefully move the cookies, with the cutout intact, onto the cooling rack.
Once the cookies have cooled fully, THEN remove the inner circle. You may need to use the smaller cutter to make sure the inner circle is cut cleanly through. Once you have each of the piece you need, set them together in sets with one whole cookies as the bottom of the "cookie box", then add two rings and then you'll need one whole cookie as the top (see post for details).

Royal Icing

Beat all ingredients until stiff peaks form.
Spoon some of the thick white icing into individual bowls and add desired coloring (I colored mine light blue). I recommend gel food coloring. (Save some of the royal icing to assembly the jelly bean flowers.)
Add additional water, about 1 teaspoon at a time until you’ve reached the consistency you need.
Outline the cookies and then fill in with the blue icing (or a color of your choice), then allow to fully dry, at least 4-8 hours.
OPTIONAL: You can use the royal icing to "glue" the rings and bottom circle together to create a secure box. You can also just stack the cookies if you prefer.

Jelly Belly Flowers

While you wait on the icing to dry, prepare the Jelly Belly “flowers”. I created these same kind of flowers for my Jelly Belly Flower Cake, so hop on over to that post for step by step photos on how to make the flowers and leaves.
Cut the Jelly Belly beans (as shown in the Jelly Belly Flower Cake post) and set the candies together on your work surface in the same way you plan to assemble then on the cookies.
Once the base icing on the cookies is fully dry, use royal icing to attach each “flower petal” (Jelly Belly halves) directly to the iced cookie.
If desired, after you’ve added the flower and leaves to the cookies, add a simple dotted border (I used white icing) to finish off the look.

Notes

I used these circle cookie cutters but you can use any shape you like.

Sugar Cookie Notes:

I HIGHLY recommend using a large stand mixer to mix up the dough, if at all possible. It is possible to mix up the recipe with a hand-held mixer, but it will take a lot more hand kneading to combine all of the flour.

Be sure to omit the additional salt if you are using salted butter in the recipe.

Flavoring options - Feel free to add your choice of fresh citrus zest (1-2 teaspoons), or add 1/2 to 1 teaspoon almond extract in addition to the vanilla extract listed.

If you prefer a more crisp cookie, simply bake an extra minute or two.

Baked cookies will remain fresh at least one week (stored in a Tupperware type container, or individually wrapped).

Baked cookies can be successfully frozen for a month or more. Layer baked cookies in a Tupperware type container with parchment paper between layers of cookies. Thaw cookies at room temperature before decorating. I do not recommend freezing the cookies after they've been decorated.

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