*See the photo tutorial in this blog post for step by step photos of the process.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream together softened butter and granulated sugar well.

Add the egg and almond extract and mix until fluffy.

In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt.

Add flour mixture to the wet mixture and mix until incorporated, scraping down the sides in between.

Remove 1/2 c. of the dough and place it in a small bowl. Remove another 1/2 c. of dough and place it in another small bowl.

Color one of the 1/2 c. dough balls pink with a few drop of food coloring, mixing it in the mixer. Do the same for the other 1/2 c. of dough, except color it blue with a few drops of blue food coloring. I just removed my plain dough from my mixing bowl and used the same mixing bowl to first color the 1/2 c. dough section bright pink. Then I removed the pink dough and wiped it out with a paper towel to remove the remaining color, then colored the other 1/2 c. dough ball bright blue in the same mixing bowl.

Form the plain dough into a ball, lightly flour the counter, and roll it out to an even thickness, with a rolling pin, to be approximately 13" at the longest part. Mine came out oval in shape and that's ok. Add splotches of pink and blue to the top of the plain dough by getting a bit of the colored dough in your hand, pressing it flat, then pressing it lightly into the top of the plain dough. Try to stagger the colors, but it's ok if they overlap in some places. Do the same for both the pink and blue dough.

Then, use the rolling pin to lightly roll the colors into the plain dough, so there won't be gaps in the finished cookies. You don't want the dough to thin out any more or increase in size at this point, so roll it lightly.

With your hands, slowly and carefully roll up the dough, as you would with cinnamon rolls. Make sure to smooth the cracks in the dough and press them out as you go. After it's all rolled together, roll it with your hands back and forth in the center and downward to make it all about the same diameter throughout the snake. Mine ended up being 16" long after doing this. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and place on a cookie sheet in the fridge to firm up. This will take at least 1 hour.

Once the dough is firm, remove it from the fridge and from the plastic wrap, then use a sharp knife to slice the dough into 1/2" thick rounds. Place them a few inches apart on the baking sheet-lined cookie sheets. No more than 3 cookies across and 5 cookies down. The dough will spread.

Place them in a 375 degree Fahrenheit-preheated oven and bake for approximately 7 to 8 minutes. Immediately after removing them from the oven, press Unicorn baking chips into the tops of the cookies. Allow them to cool for a couple minutes on the cookie sheets before carefully removing them to cooling racks to cool completely.