Firework Cookies for the 4th!

My mom has always been known for her sugar cookies. She makes them for every single family gathering, I am not joking, if they are missing someone will comment about it. Sometimes she sprinkles them with sugar and other times she decorates with royal icing. I have always helped her in the preparation of the cookies, but never have I tried my hand with royal icing.

When I saw the cover of the most recent issue of the Martha Stewart Living magazine, I knew it was time for me to tackle this royal icing thing once and for all. Now mine don't look nearly as good as the ones on the cover, but for my first time I was quite impressed with myself. The technique used in these cookies is also quite forgiving. I absolutely love how festive these cookies are for the 4th of July! The colors make me smile and makes me excited for some fireworks this upcoming weekend. I think that these would be the perfect addition to any BBQ that you might attend over the fourth of July weekend. I posted them today to give you the time to prepare to make them :)

I used a very helpful tutorial for flooding the cookies which I have linked below in the recipe instructions. I actually thought that icing the cookies was very therapeutic. The only thing that I could really complain about is the drying time involved, which for this particular cookie is not too bad, but as cookies get more complicated I could see this being a very big issue. I am definitely excited for the possibilities in the future with royal icing.

Ingredients:
For the cookies:
1 cup butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 egg
3 tbsp. milk
1 tsp. vanilla
3 cups flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt

For the icing:
3 tablespoons Meringue Powder
4 cups (about 1 lb.) confectioners' sugar
6 tablespoons warm water
Red & Blue dye

What you'll do:
For the cookies: Whisk dry ingredients together in a small bowl. Cream butter and sugar until light & fluffy. Add in egg, milk, and vanilla, blend until combined. Add dry ingredients to the bowl gradually. Mix until all the flour has been incorporated. Empty dough out on to plastic wrap, cover completely, and refrigerate for one hour and up to one day. Once you are ready, let the dough rest for about 10 minutes for easier handling. Sprinkle work area with flour, roll out dough and cut into desired shapes. Cook at 400 degrees foe 5-8 minutes depending on the thickness of your cookies.

For the icing: When your cookies are completely cool, beat all ingredients until icing forms peaks.

For the decorating: Outline your cookies with white icing and let set. After the outline is dried, flood cookie with white royal icing. Annie has a great tutorial on how to do this.While the icing is still wet, pipe concentric circles (think dartboard) of alternating colors or the same color. I dyed some of my white icing red and blue, filled pastry bags with a Wilton round 5 tip to create the circles. I liked the way the alternating colors looked best. As you can see in the picture below, my circles were not perfect. With a toothpick, drag lines from the center circle to the outward circle. I played around with the designs a lot, some looked a little too much like spider webs so I curled the ends to create the pinwheel effect.

Source: Cookies- Betsy Blaston; Royal Icing- Wilton; Firework inspiration: Martha Stewart