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sugar cookies decorated like fireworks and stars with blue, red, pink, and purple icing with shimmery sprinkles on top.

Fireworks Celebration Cookies (Easy Decoration)

★★★★★ 5 from 1 review
  • Author: Sally
  • Prep Time: 2 hours, 30 minutes
  • Cook Time: 12 minutes
  • Total Time: 4 hours, 45 minutes (includes cooling)
  • Yield: 24 3-4 inch cookies
  • Category: Cookies
  • Method: Baking
  • Cuisine: American

Description

These fun and festive fireworks cookies are soft and buttery with hints of vanilla and lemon. They’re topped with my favorite royal icing in various shades to look like bursting fireworks. This piping design is quite simple, even for beginners. My recipe is detailed and thorough, and you can find a full list of tools above the recipe and in the recipe Notes.

Ingredients

  • 2 and 1/4 cups (281g) all-purpose flour (spooned & leveled), plus more as needed for rolling and work surface
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 3/4 cup (170g) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
  • 3/4 cup (150g) granulated sugar
  • 1 large egg, at room temperature
  • 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
  • 1 teaspoon lemon extract
  • optional: 2 teaspoons lemon zest

Royal Icing

Instructions

  1. Make the cookies: Whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt together in a medium bowl. Set aside.
  2. In a large bowl using a handheld or a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugar together on high speed until completely smooth and creamy, about 2 minutes. Add the egg, vanilla extract, lemon extract, and lemon zest and beat on high speed until combined, about 1 minute. Scrape down the sides and up the bottom of the bowl and beat again as needed to combine.
  3. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix on low speed until combined. Dough will be a bit soft. If the dough seems too soft and sticky for rolling, add 1 more Tablespoon of flour.
  4. Divide the dough into 2 equal parts. Place each portion onto a piece of lightly floured parchment paper or a lightly floured silicone baking mat. With a lightly floured rolling pin, roll the dough out to about 1/4-inch thickness. Use more flour if the dough seems too sticky. The rolled-out dough can be any shape, as long as it is evenly 1/4-inch thick.
  5. Lightly dust one of the rolled-out dough portions with flour. Place a piece of parchment paper on top. (This prevents sticking.) Place the 2nd rolled-out dough on top. Cover with plastic wrap or aluminum foil, then refrigerate for at least 1–2 hours and up to 2 days.
  6. Once chilled, preheat oven to 350°F (177°C). Line 2 or 3 large baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. Carefully remove the top dough piece from the refrigerator. If it’s sticking to the bottom, run your hand under it to help remove it. Using a cookie cutter, cut the dough into shapes. I used this flower cookie cutter for the fireworks cookies. For the pictured little stars (that just have flooded icing on them), I used a small star from this set.
  7. Re-roll the remaining dough and continue cutting until all is used. Repeat with 2nd piece of dough. (Note: It doesn’t seem like a lot of dough, but you get a lot of cookies from the dough scraps you re-roll.)
  8. Arrange cookies on baking sheets 3 inches apart. Bake for 11–12 minutes or until lightly browned around the edges. If your oven has hot spots, rotate the baking sheets halfway through bake time. Allow cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely before decorating.
  9. Make the icing: Watch the video of the icing below so you get an idea of what the final consistency should be. Pour confectioners’ sugar, meringue powder, and 9 Tablespoons of water into a large bowl. Using a hand mixer or a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, beat icing ingredients together on high speed for 1.5 – 2 minutes. When lifting the whisk up off the icing, the icing should drizzle down and smooth out within 5-10 seconds. If it’s too thick, beat in more water 1 Tablespoon at a time. I usually need 10 Tablespoons but on particularly dry days, I use up to 12-14 Tablespoons. Keep in mind that the longer you beat the royal icing, the thicker it becomes. If your royal icing is too thin, just keep beating it to introduce more air OR you can add more sifted confectioners’ sugar.
  10. Decorate the fireworks cookies: Divide the icing up into separate bowls, depending on how many colors of icing you’d like. Stir in gel food coloring, and then spoon the icings into piping bags fitted with piping tip #2 or piping tip #3. Pipe curved lines from the middle of the cookie to the edges. (I make the “middle” a little more off center to look more like a firework, see photos.) If you want to add sprinkles like the pictured cookies, I piped every other line, dipped the cookie (with wet icing) into sparkling sugar sprinkles, and then piped the rest of the lines. You can also add little star sprinkles to the fireworks cookies, and I used the stars from this sprinkle mix. Pipe a little dot of icing, then adhere the star sprinkle to it.
  11. Decorate the plain star cookies: For the pictured plain star-shaped cookies, I suggest Wilton piping tip #3 or Wilton piping tip #4. Pipe a border around the cookies and then flood the center with icing. Feel free to dip into sprinkles.
  12. Icing completely dries in about 2 hours at room temperature. No need to cover the decorated cookies as you wait for the icing to set. If it’s helpful, decorate the cookies directly on a baking sheet so you can place the entire baking sheet in the refrigerator to help speed up the icing setting.
  13. Enjoy cookies right away or wait until the icing sets to serve them. Once the icing has set, these cookies are great for gifting or for sending. Plain or decorated cookies stay soft for about 5 days when covered tightly at room temperature. For longer storage, cover and refrigerate for up to 10 days.

Notes

  1. Freezing Instructions: Plain or decorated sugar cookies freeze well up to 3 months. Wait for the icing to set completely before layering between sheets of parchment paper in a freezer-friendly container. To thaw, thaw in the refrigerator or at room temperature. You can also freeze the cookie dough for up to 3 months before rolling it out. Prepare the dough through step 3, divide in half, flatten both halves into discs as we do with pie crust, wrap each in plastic wrap, then freeze. To thaw, thaw the discs in the refrigerator, then bring to room temperature for about 1 hour. Roll out the dough as directed in step 4, then chill rolled-out dough in the refrigerator for 45 minutes to 1 hour before cutting into shapes and baking.
  2. Royal Icing Make-Ahead Details: You can prepare the royal icing 2-3 days ahead of time. I recommend transferring it to a smaller bowl or container and tightly sealing for up to 3 days in the refrigerator. When you’re ready to use it, let it come to room temperature, then mix it up with a whisk a few times as it may have separated. Whisking in a few drops of water is helpful if it thickened. See Royal Icing page for detailed freezing instructions.
  3. Special Tools (affiliate links): Electric Mixer (Handheld or Stand Mixer) | Baking Sheets | Silicone Baking Mats or Parchment Sheets | Rolling Pin or Adjustable Rolling Pin | Cooling Rack | Meringue Powder | Cookie Cutters (I used a flower cookie cutter and a small star from this set) | Americolor Soft Gel Paste Color Kit | Wilton Icing Tip #2 or Wilton Icing Tip #3 for fireworks detail | Wilton Icing Tip #4 for outlining and flooding the star cookies | Disposable or Reusable Piping Bags | Couplers | Sanding Sugar Sprinkles (I like Wilton or CK Products brands) | Starfetti Mix Sprinkles
  4. Room Temperature: Room-temperature butter is essential. If the dough is too sticky, your butter may have been too soft. Room-temperature butter is actually cool to the touch. Room-temperature egg is preferred so it’s quickly and evenly mixed into the cookie dough.
  5. Lemon Flavor: I love flavoring this cookie dough with 1 teaspoon lemon extract as listed in the ingredients above. You could replace with lemon juice, but the flavor won’t be strong at all. You can also add 2 teaspoons lemon zest as listed. The lemon flavor is optional. If you want to skip the lemon flavor, replace the lemon extract with 1 more teaspoon vanilla extract and skip the zest.
  6. Royal Icing Success Tips: See my complete Royal Icing page for all of my success tips. When you’re not working directly with the royal icing (for example, you are decorating cookies but you still have some icing left in the bowl that you intend to use next), place a damp paper towel directly on the surface of the royal icing. This prevents it from hardening.
  7. Be sure to check out my top 5 cookie baking tips AND these are my 10 must-have cookie baking tools.

Keywords: fireworks celebration cookies

Find it online: https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/fireworks-celebration-cookies/