Star Spangled Cookies

Aren't these fun? Easy, too!


Sugar Cookies:

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 to 1 1/2 cups sugar*
1 egg
2 3/4 cups sifted flour
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking powder
dash salt

* After I scraped the seeds from a vanilla bean for the Watermelon Sweet Tea Granita, I put the vanilla bean in a jar with sugar. It smells so good - sweet and vanilla-y! I used the vanilla sugar for these cookies.

In a large mixing bowl, cream together butter and sugar. Add the egg and beat until fluffy.

Add vanilla, sifted flour, baking powder, and salt. Mix well. Cover and refrigerate. (Dough can be refrigerated for several days.)

When ready to bake cookies, preheat oven to 350°.

Roll dough to 1/4-inch thick. Cut out shapes with cookie cutter. I used a 2 1/2-inch star cookie cutter.

Bake cookies for 9 to 11 minutes, or until cookies are just beginning to brown on the edges.

Cool on pan for a minute or two, then remove to wire racks to finish cooling.

This recipe yielded something like 30 cookies.


I love this part...the cookie glaze:

2 cups confectioners' sugar
1 tablespoon water
1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon light corn syrup
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
scant 1/4 teaspoon butter flavoring (or you can use more vanilla, or a 1/2 teaspoon of almond or lemon extract if you prefer)
red and blue food coloring

Before you start, place a couple of wire racks on top of baking sheets. It will make cleanup easier later; any drips and dribbles from the cookies lands on the baking sheets and not on your counters. (Some concentrated food pastes can stain!)

Put the water in a small bowl and gradually add the confectioners' sugar. Stir until smooth. Beat in the corn syrup and vanilla until icing is smooth and glossy. If icing is too thick, add more corn syrup.

Divide the glaze among three shallow dishes. Pie plates work great.

Tint one container of cookie glaze red, one blue, and leave the last one white.

Dip the cookies in the glaze and shake gently to remove the excess. Place the cookie on a wire rack to harden, which takes several hours.

This amount of cookie glaze covered all the cookies I made just right - I didn't run out and didn't have tons of left over. Just the right amount!


If you make these, I'd love to see your pictures!

Icing Glaze for Cookies

I love to bake rolled cookies. I love decorating them, too.


But I don't really enjoy making royal icing. It's a high maintenance ordeal: one batch to outline and do detail work, another batch to fill the cookies. It seems like a fair amount of trouble.

Plus royal icing doesn't taste good. It doesn't taste bad, exactly, but it's not good, either. It's kind of like fondant in that way: pretty to look at, not so much to eat.

This icing recipe is it. Easy, I mean, super easy. The icing dries hard enough so that cookies can be packaged in cellophane bags or stacked. The color stays true after the cookies dry, too.

1 cup confectioners' sugar
2 teaspoons milk or water (I used water. I'm always leering of leaving anything that has dairy product out at room temperature for any amount of time.)
2 teaspoons light corn syrup
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
assorted food coloring

Put the water or milk in a small bowl and gradually add the confectioners' sugar. Stir until smooth. (I had to add another teaspoon or two of water.) Beat in the corn syrup and vanilla until icing is smooth and glossy. If icing is too thick, add more corn syrup.

Divide the icing into separate bowls, and add food colorings to each to desired intensity.

Place wire cooking racks over paper towels. Dip cookies into the icing and place the cookies on the wire racks. Any excess icing will drip onto the paper towel.

While the icing is still wet, you can embellish them with sanding sugars and sprinkles. You can spoon a bit of other colors onto the cookie and use a toothpick to swirl the colors around. It makes a marbelized-tie-dyed effect.

The cookies need to dry several hours before they will be hard enough to package or stack.

But you can eat them right away.