Autumn Leaf Sugar Cookies with Maple Syrup

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Everyone loves the colors and flavors of fall and these beautiful Autumn Leaf Sugar Cookies with Maple Syrup are colorful and delicious.  Bake a batch of these colorful and easy to make cutout cookies to celebrate the season.  Everyone loves them!

“These cookies have the prettiest fall colors”

We have made batches of these colorful sugar cookies flavored with maple syrup for fall parties, and they are always a hit sitting on my Thanksgiving table.

It’s pretty common with my family to pick out your favorite cookies and set them on plates with your name to have after dinner.  It’s all about getting the prettiest and most colorful leaf cookie on the platter.

Which one is your favorite?

Ingredients needed

Leaf cookie making tips

These cookies take just seven ingredients and leaf-shaped cookie cutters. Have fun cutting out the leaf shapes and seeing what colors appear.

• This dough needs to chill for an hour. The dough is not thick and heavy, so plan for a little chillin time.
• Because these cookies are all about color, I have found using just red and orange colors combine to make the prettiest soft hues on the cookies.  Of course, you can try other colors like adding yellow or maybe a small amount of green. Experiment with colors!
• Just make sure to keep the colors as separated as possible so they don’t combine into one color of dough. Just press the dough scraps together and reroll.
• If you don’t have maple syrup you can add extra vanilla extract or almond extract.
• Try adding some spice to the dough like cinnamon or nutmeg, even pumpkin pie spice would be delicious.
• These cookies bake fast, just 7 minutes.

Let’s make cookies

How to mix and color the dough

Step 1.  Add the softened butter to a mixing bowl and beat until smooth and creamy

Step 2. Add the brown sugar and mix again to combine

Step 3.  Add the egg, maple syrup, and vanilla, mix on medium speed to combine and then scrape the bowl.  At this point the batter will look curdled, that’s Ok.

Step 4. Add one cup of the flour, the baking powder, and salt. Mix on medium-low until combined then add the rest of the flour.  You may have to finish mixing in the flour with a wooden spoon if the dough is too thick.

Today I am using my hand-mixer because many of my readers don’t have a kitchen-aid mixer and I want to show that you don’t need one to make these cookies.  If you have the kitchen-aid by all means use it.

Step 5. Separate the dough into thirds which is about 3/4 cup each. Put two of the doughs in separate bowls and the other dough wrap in plastic wrap.

Step 6. Add about a 1/8 teaspoon of red gel food coloring to one of the bowls and orange gel food coloring to the other bowl.  Mix the food coloring into the doughs and then turn out on a piece of plastic wrap and then wrap up the dough and place all three doughs in the refrigerator for 1 hour.

How to shape the dough for cutout cookies

Step 7. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Line two cookies sheets with parchment or a Silpat

Step 8. Take the three doughs out of the refrigerator. Set out a rolling matt and lightly dust with flour. Cut each dough into thirds and then using one third at a time roll each color into a 10″ rope. Keep the unused dough in the refrigerator until you need it.

Step 9. Place the three colors of ropes together on the floured mat and twist them together to make a twisted rope.

Step 10. Fold the twisted rope in half and press down with your hand to flatten.  Lightly dust the rolling pin and roll the dough to about a 1/8″ thick round.

Step 11. Cut out your leaf cookies, try to keep each cut-out as close as you can to the last one so there isn’t a lot of scraps leftover.  Please each leaf cut-out on the baking sheet.  The stem part of the cut-out is tricky sometimes and tends to break off so watch for that.

How to reroll cookie dough scraps

Step 12. When all the cutouts are made gently gather the flat scraps press them together, leaving them as flat as possible.

Now you can reroll the dough to 1/8″ thick and cut out more cookies, then again just push the leftover dough together, roll again and cut out more cookies.  Sometimes all I get is one cookie each time but doing this can mean many extra cookies.

What you don’t want to do is gather all the scraps and roll them into a ball before rerolling which will result in all the colors combining into one, not so pretty color.

Step 13. Repeat cutting out cookies with the remaining dough.

Step 14. Bake the cookies for 7 minutes, when done remove the cookies to a wire rack to finish cooling.

Not only are these the best autumn cookies they are the prettiest.  Now that the cookies are baked make a cup of your favorite tea or coffee and sit down and enjoy a cookie or two.

One Hot Oven cookie inspirations

Try these Orange and Black Sprinkle Cookies for Halloween, ghosts, and goblins love them.

These Chocolate Shortbread Cookies are filled with crunchy cacao nibs for extra flavor.

Ginger Spice Cookies are a family favorite baked with three types of ginger.

If you like lemon, bake a batch of these Frosted Lemon Cookies.

Baking Supplies

Red food color and 0range food color and a really flavorful maple syrup

You also need fall autumn cookie cutters in the shape of leaves, my cutters are maple and oak leaves

I love flour sack towels and these are colorful and perfect for fall.

Pin for later!

 

Other One Hot Oven recipes

Another fall favorite recipe is this moist and flavorful Pumpkin Cake topped with an amazing white chocolate cream cheese frosting.

Homemade popcorn is the best and so is this Caramel Corn with Cinnamon.

Make a bowl of this hearty Creamy Apple Oatmeal for breakfast that has just the right amount of spices.

Grab your skillet and make this Farmstand Cornbread that is full of cheese and veggies.

If you are a tea lover try my favorite subscription box so you never run out of tea.

Plum Deluxe Tea offers several of my favorites, plus with each subscription, I always find new flavors I love.

Thank you for stopping by the One Hot Oven blog.  Please leave a comment to say Hello or just let me know what you are baking these days, I always love hearing from fellow bakers.

About Jere’

From learning to cook on a farm in Indiana to culinary school in California,  my passion for food is never-ending.  Turning on my oven to bake something for friends and family is my happy place, and I am glad to be here at One Hot Oven sharing both sweet and savory recipes with all my baking friends.

Have any questions or just want to chat about the recipe? Contact me here, and I’ll be happy to help!