Last updated on January 5th, 2021 at 06:40 am
What’s a tailgate party without cookies?! Football shaped cookies may be easier to make than you think! I have two kids so most of the time I really work hard to find shortcuts and ways to make my tasks as efficient as possible. A football cookie tray can be a delicious and visually impressive addition to your football tailgate or Super Bowl party. Here I bring you my favorite tips and suggestions for making football shaped cookies, including football sugar cookies, football chocolate chip cookies, and my personal favorite, red velvet football cookies.
First things first, try not to do what I inevitably do the night before the game–stay up until 2:30 a.m. cooking and baking!
It really helps if you can prep some of your stuff in advance or take shortcuts that allow you to get some sleep. I’m going to give you some of my favorite time-saving tips below along with my favorite football-shaped cookie recipes. We are talking about easy football cookies here!
Football Cookies Recipe List
Here are my favorite recipes to make football cookies for your next tailgate or party.
Red Velvet Football Shaped Cookies
I’ve fallen in love with the Red Velvet Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction. If you haven’t made them yourself, you should really try it. And use my variation for your next tailgate or Super Bowl party! And please, for the love of football, double this recipe, because one batch is never enough! I highly advise following her recipe even down to the chill time so that the dough is more manageable.
When it’s time to bake the cookies, use my method below for forming football shaped cookies with your dough. Your hands will inevitably get a little messy, but if you can’t handle it, get out of the kitchen! For my fun football spin on decorating and completing the cookie, use the instructions below to pipe the white laces onto the cookies. You can use either melted white chocolate chips or white frosting — cream cheese and vanilla both work well.
Football Chocolate Chip Cookies
This is America! Chocolate chip cookies are a staple for pretty much any social event, but especially for the football game!
Everyone has their own favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe, so I can’t really pinpoint a favorite here. Personally, I alternate between the Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie and the extra buttery, traditional favorite, Nestle Toll House chocolate chip cookies. Sometimes I modify either of these to slightly alter the final result.
Make a tiny tweak on your favorite recipe and you’ve got perfect football chocolate chip cookies.
How to Make Football Shaped Chocolate Chip Cookies:
- Roll chocolate chip cookie dough into balls or oval type balls.
- Pinch in the ends of your cookies into points and bake as usual.
- If you want, you can also decorate with M&M’s or jimmies in your team colors. (Yes, I said Jimmies – Philadelphia’s signature ice cream topping and cookie decoration!)
- Don’t forget to pipe the laces on these cookies to add a hint of flavor and the final touch to their design.
- One time I forgot to pipe on the laces of the football shaped chocolate chip cookies… I had to play it off as “laces out” that day!
Football Sugar Cookies
Sugar cookies are a great family favorite in our home. I’m fairly well-known in my circle of friends for these cookies, and I wish I could take the credit.
I grew up on the Betty Crocker Sugar Cookie Recipe, but you can use any cutout cookie recipe you like to get your football sugar cookies ready for the tailgate or football party.
If you do use Betty’s, I’m not going to lie. I do up the ante on the powdered sugar as well as the almond extract for a bit more of an in-your-face almondy sweetness.
It’s hard to go wrong with a good sugar cookie, especially when you’ve got endless cookie cutter possibilities – footballs of all sizes, football helmets, jerseys, and more.
Load up on the sugar crystals, jimmies, or other cookie decorations for a beautiful addition to your football cookie tray. You can even make team cookies to bring that added luck on game day!
Forming Football Shaped Cookies
You can use most cookie doughs to form football shaped cookies. The secret is making good cookie dough footballs.
I’ve made them with chocolate chip cookie dough, sugar cookie dough, red velvet, and snickerdoodle dough so far.
The easiest way to get football cookies is with a football cookie cutter, of course. I prefer sugar cookie dough and sugar crystals for this method.
I also love my Philadelphia Eagles cookie cutters that my mom got me for Christmas one year.
Of course, not all cookie dough can be rolled and cut out, so you’ve got to improvise to get the full range of football shaped cookies ready for your tailgate.
Making Cookie Dough Footballs
Making cookie dough into balls is a fairly common technique so we can build from that to make your football cookies. Here are some steps to get you started.
- Roll a spoonful of cookie dough into a ball.
- Press it onto your cookie sheet.
- Pinch the ends of the dough into points. The center should be fuller with the ends tapered, like a real football.
- Flatten the whole cookie a bit if desired. Use the underside of a clean glass or mug if you like.
- Bake to desired doneness. I take mine out about a minute early with most cookie doughs so the cookies are nice and chewy!
- Decorate and enjoy!
Adding White Laces to Football Cookies
One of the most iconic parts of a football cookie has got to be the white lacing. I have really simplified the decorating process to make it easy on you with very little cleanup! Depending on your preference, get white store-bought frosting or white chocolate chips. Here are the steps you’ll need to follow:
White Chocolate Football Laces
- Put a handful of white chocolate chips into a glass measuring cup.
- Heat gently in your microwave, about 20-3o seconds at a time.
- While you are waiting, line up all your cookies on a cooling rack or other flat surface.
- Stir after each interval. Stop microwaving once chips are molten and totally smooth.
- Use scissors to cut a very tiny corner off of a zipper-seal sandwich bag.
- Spoon molten white chocolate into the bag.
- Squish the white chocolate down to the bottom where the cut corner is.
- Pipe a straight line horizontally across the center of the first cookie.
- Add three or more white lines vertically across the horizontal line.
- Move onto the next cookie and repeat until you’re done.
- Allow the white chocolate to set for 20-30 minutes.
- Pack in air-tight container for game day!
Vanilla or Cream Cheese Frosting Football Laces
- Line up all your cookies on a cooling rack or other flat surface.
- Use scissors to cut a very tiny corner off of a zipper-seal sandwich bag.
- Spoon white frosting into the bag.
- Squish the frosting down to the bottom where the cut corner is.
- Pipe a straight line horizontally across the center of the first cookie.
- Add three or more white lines vertically across the horizontal line.
- Move onto the next cookie and repeat until you’re done.
- Allow the white chocolate to set for 20-30 minutes.
- Pack in air-tight container for game day!
Football Shaped Cookie Time Savers
When planning for an Eagles tailgate, I often feel like I have an endless To Do list for my tailgate menu.
Make Ahead!
I’ve managed to feel productive by mixing up my cookie dough a day or two in advance and sticking it in the fridge until I have time to bake.
Breaking up the process makes it easier to get cookies made when sometimes I only have shorter chunks of free time.
The future inner Italian grandmother in me also likes to bring more than one kind of football cookie to a tailgate party, so it’s nice to do the mixing at one point and then the baking and cooling later so the cookies will be as fresh as possible.
I’ve even brought them to the tailgate still warm before by doing this!
More Cookie Baking Time Savings
My biggest time saver so far works great even if you aren’t tailgating!
Particularly if you like cookies and often want fresh-baked ones on demand!
I bought these little pint-sized containers with lids from Amazon, just like the ones your soup comes in from your favorite Chinese takeout place.
Simply mix up a batch of your favorite cookie dough, fill it up, and pop one of these bad boys in the freezer.
Going to a friend’s house?
Planning a tailgate?
Just craving warm cookies and milk?
Now you can have your favorite cookies any time you want them.
Before you freeze it, write the cook temp and time on a label or a piece of painter’s tape and stick it to the cup.
If you don’t have these containers, don’t worry. I’ve also had success freezing cookie dough in zipper-seal bags like Ziploc.
Tailgate Wife Hack: When you’re done tailgating and packing up your vehicle so you can go into the game, take out another one of those zip-seal baggies and pack it full of cookies!
Bring it into the stadium for a yummy snack during the game. (That is, of course, if you have any cookies left!)