Forth of July Fireworks Cookies

Happy Forth of July! Every year, my in-laws rent a beach house around the Forth of July week and we all meet up and have our yearly reunion. It is a lot of fun, especially for Alya who is suddenly surrounded by all the cousins and second seconds. Being the youngest, she is the center of attention and  she really enjoys the company. In fact, she does not want anything to do with us, as in her dad and myself. 

Every year, I make a cake to celebrate all the july birthdays
: Alya, my husband and my father-in-law. This year, I was exhausted from Alya's early birthday party (posts very soon) and I decided to make easy decorated sugar cookies. I saw these cookies in Martha's Stewart Living Magazine last year and they have been lurking in the back of my mind, wanting to come out. It is true that you cant blow a candle on a cookie, but cookies make everyone happy. You probably know by now that my cookies taste as good as they look. 

These cookies seemed easy to decorate, but it takes some practice to actually get the design as neat as possible. Mine, were very far from being perfect, especially because I opted to mix the food coloring in the squeeze bottle by shaking the bottle, which created a million stubborn air bubble. It was impossible to get rid of them by popping them with a tooth pick. You can easily see the many air bubbles, but I just did not care at that point. Perfection takes time, and I have neither the time nor the patience to perfect the task at hand. 

I used my usual recipes of sugar cookies, and royal icing but referred to Martha's Stewart Living Magazine technique to get the swirling effect.

To get this swirling effect, all you have to do is to swirl together the white and other piped concentric circles of colored icing. 

Ingredients and tools

Royal Icing in White, Red, and Blue recipes here
Plastic squeeze bottles or pastry bags
Sugar Cookies Recipe here
Circle cookie cutter
Toothpicks or skewers

Method:

Following my Sugar cookie recipe, cut out the cookies using a circle cutter.

Bake the cookies until slightly golden

Prepare the icings and place each colored icing in a separate plastic squeeze bottle; place the white piping royal icing in a piping bag with tip 2.

Pipe an outline of white piping icing around edge of 1 cookie

Flood the cookies with the white flooding consistency icing

Immediately pipe a dot of tinted icing in the center of cookie

pipe concentric circles, alternating colors if you like.

Using a toothpick or a skewer, create bursts by dragging the wet icing out from the center. Work in 1 direction, or alternate dragging inward, then outward.

 The not successful ones, but equally delicious

 Let Dry and repeat

Enjoy!
Sugar cookies recipe here
Royal icing recipes here
Inspired by Martha Stewart Living Magazine Fireworks Cookies here