4th of July Star-Spangled Tinker Dust Cookies | Bakell.com

Festive red white and blue star-spangled cookies that are perfect as a patriotic Memorial Day or 4th of July celebration dessert!  This is a recipe that we saw sometime back that we thought was creative, fun and perfect for the 4th of July Holiday ~ so we'd thought we would pass along this perfect cookies recipe!

OK, before we get started lets first talk through the process of making these then further down the page we can get into what you'll need and the ingredients! These beautiful Fourth of July cookies are some of the coolest I’ve ever seen, with their whirls of red, blue and white... they are similar in style to our Easter Water Color Cookies! OK, anyway, these Star-Spangled Glitter Cookies have silver star spangles and a light sprinkle of our edible Bakell Luster or Tinker Dusts or Glitters which make these cookies stand out! Click here of you need a "Star Shaped Cookie Cutter" as well.

I highly, highly recommend using gel food coloring AND our edible cake & cookie dusts and glitters! Also here's a quick decorators tip, when using gel, a little goes a long way and the color comes out much more vibrantly. With standard liquid dyes, red coloring tends to appear as more of a pinkish shade when combined with the white glaze, and we want this to be a bright, vibrant, distinct red!

Take care when you’re swirling your dyes together that you don’t over-mix them, otherwise you’ll end up with some purple-y hues in your cookies. It’s not the worst thing that can happen, but the goal is to stick to red white and blue for these.

Another tip, please don’t overdo it on the dye. Remember, these are red, white and blue, so we want the white glaze to shine through as well. Too much dye will also make these cookies taste like food coloring rather than the soft, buttery, vanilla-glazed sugar cookies that we’re aiming for!

With those "Bakers Tips" in mind, this marble/swirl glaze technique is really, really easy to pull off. Below are a list of recommended tools for this recipe with links to what you will need, including cookie cutters, gel food coloring, silver star sprinkles, and edible Tinker Dust™ or any of our edible decorating dusts.

Ingredients:

• Prep Time 1 hour
• Cook Time 10 minutes
• Total Time 1 hour 10 minutes
• Servings 50 cookies (may vary depending on size of cookie cutter used)
• Calories 75 kcal
• Author Samantha Merritt
• Ingredients
• 1 cup unsalted butter softened (226g)
• 3/4 cups sugar (150g)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 large egg yolk
• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour (295g)

Marble Icing Glaze:

• 3 cups powdered sugar sifted (415g)
• 3 Tablespoons light corn syrup
• 3-4 Tablespoons milk
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon almond (or other, preferred) extract optional
• gel food coloring I used "red red" and "electric blue"
• Silver star sprinkles
• Star Shaped Cookie Cutter Set (use this set to create different sizes) 
• Bakell Luster Dust, Disco Dazzler or Edible Tinker Dust dust/ glitter

Instructions (Cookies & Marble Glaze):

Cookies

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. In mixer or with electric hand-mixer beat your butter until well-creamed.
3. Add sugar to the mixing bowl and beat with the butter until well combined (about 30 seconds).
4. Stir in vanilla extract and salt, stirring until well-combined, and scrape down the sides of the bowl using a rubber spatula to ensure ingredients are well-incorporated.
5. Add egg yolk and beat until combined
6. With mixer on medium-low speed, gradually add flour until well-incorporated (you will definitely need to scrape down the sides and the bottom of the bowl several times for this, as the mixture is fairly dry and crumbs tend to settle at the bottom of the bowl).
7. Transfer dough to clean surface and use your hands to form it into a cohesive ball.
8. Flatten into a disk (about 1" thick), cover with clear wrap, and chill for 15 minutes.
9. Once dough has chilled, transfer it to a clean, lightly floured surface and use a lightly floured rolling pin to roll out to about 1/4" thickness.
10. Lightly flour your cookie cutters and cut out your shapes, transferring them to un-greased cookie sheet.
11. Once you have cut out all of the shapes that you can, be sure to re-combine the scraps and roll out and cut out again to get the maximum number of cookies from your dough.
12. Bake on 350F for 10-12 minutes (longer if you are using larger cookie cutter) and allow cookies to cool completely before dipping in chocolate.

Marble Icing Glaze

1. In a large bowl, combine sifted powdered sugar, 3 Tbsp milk, and light corn syrup. Whisk until smooth. If mixture is too dry, add additional milk, one teaspoon at a time until mixture can be stirred.
2. Stir in extracts.
3. Glaze should be thick, to test that it is the right consistency drop a few droplets on top of a test cookie. If the glaze remains stiff, it needs to be thinned. If it runs off the cookie, it is too thin and needs more powdered sugar. If it settles down smoothly, it is just right.
4. Divide glaze into four small bowls.
5. Working with one bowl at a time, use a toothpick (a different toothpick for each color) and dip it into the food coloring bottle and then into the glaze. You want a small dot of food coloring (see video).
6. Drag a toothpick through the food coloring and glaze until it is prettily swirled/marbled.
7. Holding your cookie at the base, dip the surface of each cookie into the glaze (take a look at your first cookie -- are you satisfied with the pattern? Adjust whorls with additional food coloring as needed).
8. Once the first bowl runs out or the colors become too muddled together from dipping, move onto your next bowl of food coloring (you will probably need to stir first before adding your coloring, as the surface may have begun to harden).
9. Repeat steps 5-7 until all cookies have been dipped. Allow them to harden at least 30 minutes (may take longer) for glaze to set. Enjoy!
10. Keep uneaten cookies in an airtight container at room temperature.

Ok, now enjoy and have a wonderful and patriotic 4th of July this summer! Happy Bakell'ing!