Hey Besties! I’m so excited to share these adorable 4th of July cookies decorated with love! Fireworks cookies can be really tough to decorate and I’m in LOVE with this cutter! Full transparency: You would fall out of your chair if you saw my first fireworks cookies from when I started decorating. My family was split on whether they looked more like spiders or rib cages. 🤣 WHY didn’t I take pics of those?! They could break the internet with embarrassment! But they would serve as amazing inspiration on how far you can come in cookie decorating! But I digress…
These cookies were so fun to make, and I adore the bold, cartoonish font and fireworks designs! I’ve got all kinds of metallic and glittery plans for these for our annual 4th of July party this year too! Read on for access to our no-chill, no-spread recipe collection and cookie cutter details!
Recipes
Incredible Cookies
First things first! Always gotta start with a delicious canvas, right? And when I’m staring at a HUGE quantity of cookies to decorate, I’m SO happy our recipes do not require any chilling, resting or anything else! I can have cookies baked and ready to decorate in under 30 minutes. And whether you stick with delicious vanilla or branch out to one to one of our delicious flavors, rest assured, the recipients will be in LOVE! We have been getting more and more customers requesting almond flavoring in their cookies recently, which we adore! So, for this set, we used our go-to recipe but tweak it, using 1 tsp almond emulsion and 1/2 tsp vanilla extract. And it’s SOOOO yummy! Definitely that nostalgic, bake shop flavor!
But you’ve got options! Lemon, chocolate, strawberry, orange, cotton candy, the list goes on! You always have full access to all of our no-chill, no-spread recipes HERE! While our go-to recipe is hard to beat, I highly encourage you to try other flavors, I promise you’ll be glad you did!
Royal Icing
And of course, we have to spend a moment on royal icing, right? I could spend all day talking about royal icing, but I won’t. Plus, we have several posts all about royal icing and achieving the perfect results you want. What I will quickly say is that while it may just be a short list of ingredients required to make royal icing, the products and technique you use make a WORLD of difference in your results and flavor. So, if you’re new to cookie decorating or aren’t getting the perfect results you’re looking for, I encourage you to read THIS post. It includes not only the recipe we use but shows exactly HOW we make it and all kinds of other guidance to help you troubleshoot any royal icing issues you may be having with your recipes.
Now that we have our recipes, let’s make cookies!
4th of July Cookie Cutters
If you’ve been here before, you know I’m an advocate for investing in cutters that you’ll use over and over again. You don’t need to buy ALL the cutters! Save your dough! That said, I happily invest in cutters that I use for designs I love and that I use on repeat, and these are a couple of those. Between Memorial Day, 4th of July, Veterans Day and other custom orders, these have paid for themselves over and over again. I’ve even used this fireworks cutter for New Years Eve and pool party sets!
The USA and fireworks cutters come from a favorite cutter shop, Kaleidacuts, which is well known in our cookier world! They have SO many adorable designs and I love that they offer free shipping when you spend $30! Specifically, you can find the USA cutter HERE and the fireworks cutter HERE. I love their designs, quality and value of their cutters, and so many other cookiers do too!
The Puff Is Real!
For this post, I decorated these following their design, which I adore. And if you have a projector, it makes it super easy to do! I use a 12-15 second flood consistency for my base flood and then into the dehydrator they went to crust. When you use a dehydrator, it greatly speeds up the process and locks in that puffy icing along with a great sheen to your icing. So after about 10 minutes, I was ready to start adding my red and blue details! I should add, we use ChefMaster colors almost exclusively. I used Super Red and Royal Blue to achieve these colors.
Then, using a slightly thicker consistency, one that ribbons off the spoon, but doesn’t settle quickly, I added the letters and firework details. They key here is using a consistency that is thick enough to hold the shape and give you the puff but will settle perfectly smooth. And then, the dehydrator is the magic tool! Besties, I’m kind of a broken record with this, but a dehydrator is a game changer. It really is the key to lock in the puffy icing, along with properly making your royal icing from the start! If you want to learn more about all the ways a dehydrator improves your cookie-ing, THIS post breaks it all down.
After a short stint in the dehydrator again, about 15 minutes, these babies were ready to dry overnight! And then they were ready for their photo session in the morning! I had so much fun photographing these cookies, the colors really popped! And now I’m really getting excited for our 4th of July party and sharing these with our customers too! Lots of parties and celebrations means lots of customers looking for cookies!
4th of July COokie Inspiration
I hope this post all about 4th of July cookies decorated with love has inspired you to create some beautiful cookies of your own! They are pretty to look at but are even more delicious to enjoy, especially on a hot summer day!
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