July Fourth Sparkling Star Cookies


Star Cookies

These buttery Red, White, & Blue Star Cookies with candy centers are easily my daughters' favorite cookies. They may look complicated, but they're actually quite straightforward. Here are a few tips to Showing Candyhelp you make your sparkly stars picture-perfect:

1. Choose your favorite candies: During our multiple tests, we found different candies created different looks. Jolly Ranchers (shown here) have a lovely stained-glass quality, but the blue is more aqua and the red is slightly pink. Hard sour balls are slightly more opaque, but the reds and blues are truer. Life Savers also work and the banana flavor creates a pretty opaque white.
2. Get star quality: When cutting the center stars out of the larger stars, press cutter down firmly, then squeeze cutter gently to lift the star out. If that doesn't work, use the tip of a knife to remove the star.
3. Keep your dough cold: If you still have trouble cutting out those center stars, refrigerate for 10 minutes until firm. After you've cut out the center stars, refrigerate the dough again to keep sharp edges on your cookies. They'll still look nice otherwise, but will have rounded edges.
4. Spread out the candies: To get the crushed candy in the corners, use tweezers or a skewer to gently push them. You can mix and match different candy colors for swirled centers.

Pushing candy
5. Rotate your pans: To evenly brown your cookies, turn your pans halfway through baking. This also helps the candy melt evenly.  
Make them today and they'll still taste great Sunday!