Fourth of July Firecracker Cookies

This was kind of a fun cookie, it was really unusual, I've never heard to have pop rocks in any kind of recipe. The red and blue were really cute for 4th of July. After I made them, they were sitting on my counter popping for about 3 hours. So they turned out to be a pretty weird taste when I first ate them. After awhile it seemed like all the pop was out of the cookies.

Check out our other 4th of July recipes:
Fourth of July Red, White and Blue Potato Salad
Star Ice Cream Sandwiches
Red, White and Blue Burger

The idea for this recipe comes from Cake Spy.

Ingredients:
-Sugar cookie mix (plus butter and eggs required by the mix)
-Frosting (I used 1 cup powdered sugar, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla, 2 Tbsp. milk and added more until it was the right consistency)
-1 packet red pop rocks, 1 packet blue pop rocks

Make the sugar cookies according to package directions.
On the last few of them, I added a bit of the pop rocks
directly to the dough.

Mix up the frosting.

Red and blue pop rocks.

I tried to do some like the recipe I got the idea from,
I spread the frosting on the edge of the cookie, then rolled it
in the pop rocks.

This didn't work as well, the edges weren't smooth enough
to hold all the pop rocks.

Instead I sprinkled the pop rocks and some extra
sprinkles on top of the frosting and cookies.

Putting the pop rocks into the dough didn't really do anything, I couldn't taste them in the cookies. If you make these, be sure to add the pop rocks right before you plan on eating them so they don't lose their pop. The pop rocks were a little hard to spread out evenly on the cookies, but they looked ok after I spread them a bit.

Red, White and Blue Burger

Happy Grilling Wednesday! Tomorrow is the Fourth of July. I love going to see fireworks with J so I'm really excited about that.

We're also going to Becky's lake house for the weekend so we have a relaxing weekend ahead of us. For those of you who aren't frequent readers of the blog the lake house we go to has no oven! That means when we go there we do a lot of grilling and try some new recipes that don't involve an oven or stove. Becky and I have a lot of great meals planned for while we are there and they're all going to make an appearance here in July.

This recipe is inspired by the Fourth of July, we wanted to incorporate this grilling recipe with our other Fourth of July recipes -- with red, white and blue ingredients this an easy, but flavorful addition to any BBQ you might be hosting over the next few days.

Other Fourth of July Recipes:
Fourth of July Red, White and Blue Potato Salad
Star Ice Cream Sandwiches

Other Grilling Wednesday Recipes:  BBQ Maple Balsamic Burger with Sharp Cheddar, Grilled Pineapple with Honey, Cinnamon and Lime, Grilled Caprese Sandwiches, and Grilled Spicy Pepper Poppers.

Ingredients:
-4 veggie burgers, use your favorite or make some
-4 hamburger buns
-1 red pepper, roasted and sliced
-Blue cheese crumbles
-1 onion, sliced thick

In order to roast the red pepper you can follow the steps from this blog. There are detailed steps there from the first time I made a roasted red pepper, making roasted red pepper is really easy, but if you don't want to make your own you can purchase them at the store.

Grill your burger and onion slices.

Top the burger with the roasted red pepper slices, blue cheese and grilled onion.
I added a little mayo to mine also.

This burger was good, but I don't think it was the best that we've made. The one thing that I didn't like was the thick slice of onion, it would have been better to serve the onion differently, the combination of the roasted red pepper and blue cheese was really good though. If I made this again I would use less onion, but keep the blue cheese and roasted red pepper.

Star Ice Cream Sandwiches

Recipe from a Farm Girl Dabbles. She made her own ice cream, but I just used vanilla ice cream. This recipe does take a little bit of time to make because the dough will need to sit in the fridge and the cookies will need to cool before you make the ice cream sandwiches.

I cut this recipe in half and it made about six sandwiches!

Other Fourth of July Recipes: Fourth of July Red, White and Blue Potato Salad.

Ingredients:
Cookies
-1 c. unsalted butter, softened
-2/3 c. sugar
-1/4 tsp. kosher salt
-2 c. all-purpose flour
-4 T. cocoa powder
-2 T. (1 oz.) red food coloring
-1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
-red sugar, to sprinkle on top

First, soften the ice cream. Spread it onto a cookie sheet covered in wax paper.
Top with plastic wrap.

To make the cookies:

In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat butter and sugar. Add in the salt and flour, mix -- do not over mix. Then add the cocoa powder and mix again. Add the food coloring and vanilla, stirring until red coloring is evenly distributed. Divide dough into 2 equal portions and pat each into a disc. Wrap each disc in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least two hours.

Heat oven to 350°. Spray cookie sheets with cooking spray.

Lightly flour your work surface and rolling pin. Roll to about 1/4'' thick. If the dough is sticky, just pick it up and pat into a round, flour your surface again, and roll out the dough again. With a small star shaped cookie cutter, cut out star shapes and place them on the cookie sheet. 

Sprinkle with red sugar. Bake for 11 to 13 minutes, taking care to not let the cookies brown. Let cookies rest on cookie sheet a couple minutes before removing to cool completely.

Once the cookies have cooled completely, cut the ice cream out with a cookie cutter.
It helps if you dip the cookie cutter in warm water first.

Put the ice cream on a cookie half.

Top with another cookie and serve immediately.

Put the extras back in the freezer right away.

These ice cream sandwiches were surprisingly easy to make, the cookies did take some amount of time, but mostly it was a lot of downtime. Sometimes when you make ice cream sandwiches and then refreeze them the cookies get too hard to eat, but these cookies stayed chewy after being frozen.

The major issue that I had with making these was the temperature in my house. It's been hot outside, but not hot enough to turn on the air conditioning, when I put the ice cream sandwiches together I put them in a room temperature container. Once inside the freezer, the air was still too hot and the ice cream from my remaining sandwiches melted. To fix this I could have frozen the cookies and the container first or I could have put the sandwiches in the freezer in an open container for about half an hour, before putting them in a closed container.

Aside from the temperature issue, these were delicious. I made the star shapes because it was for the Fourth of July, but when I make these again I'll probably make round cookies.

Fourth of July Red, White and Blue Potato Salad

These blue potatoes were a little unusual, but I thought they were so cute for Fourth of July. Potato salad is a classic summer picnic side dish, but this one also has the red white and blue theme. Desserts are often patriotic colors, but this was interesting to be able to make a color themed side dish. I was afraid it would be hard to find these potatoes, but they were pretty easy to find, my grocery store had them in a bag, they were called Star Spangled Potatoes, and they had red, white, and blue potatoes all in one bag.

Look back the next few days for more Fourth of July recipes.

Ingredients:

-1 bag red, white, and blue potatoes

-1/3 cup mayonnaise

-1/3 cup sour cream

-1 Tbsp. mustard

-2 Tbsp. olive oil

-1 Tbsp. vinegar

-Parsley for garnish

Cut the potatoes into bit sized pieces.
Boil for about 15 minutes, or until they are soft.
We didn't have any problems with the color from our purple potatoes bleeding, but some sources say that it will. If you're worried, just do the purple ones separate.

Mix the ingredients in a bowl, then mix into the potatoes.
Top with parsley.

This star shaped bowl was really cute to serve this in.

This turned out looking pretty festive. The blue potatoes didn't taste any different than regular potatoes. We used a bit too much vinegar in ours, but I think 1 Tbsp would be a good amount, it might be a good idea to add a little bit and test, and add more if you need it.

Americana Ice Cream Cupcakes

Happy Memorial Day!! My family hosts a picnic the Sunday before every Memorial Day and my dad wanted me to come up with a dessert recipe to serve the family. The only problem was that J. and I spent the weekend in Sandusky at Becky's lake house and then drove home with only a few hours to spare for a recipe. Enter the ice cream cupcake recipe from Bubbly Nature Creations the cupcakes are adorable and great for summer due to the addition of the ice cream. I adapted this recipe to help it fit my time constraints and my taste.

Other Memorial Day Recipes: Red, White and Blue Sangria.

Ingredients: 
Cake
-Stars and Stripes Funfetti cake mix and the ingredients on the box to make cake
-Cupcake liners
-1/4 cup sprinkles to mix with batter optional

Ice Cream
-3 cups of ice cream of your choice

Whipped Cream Frosting:
-Cool Whip whipped cream frosting

Spoon about a tablespoon of cake mix into the cupcake liner.
Do not do more than that, the cake mix will rise!! You just want a little bit of cake.
You don't want to cook these too long, mine were done after about 8-10 minutes.

I used Stars and Stripes Funfetti for my cake. 

  

Once the cupcakes have cooled, top with the softened ice cream.

Top with whipped cream frosting and sprinkles right before serving.

                                      

These were refreshing and so cute! I really liked that these were small because I served them at a picnic and after you've had a whole plate of food it's nice to enjoy something sweet but small. One problem I did have was that I overfilled the cupcakes before baking them and I ended up with full sized cupcakes -- I think using a tablespoon to measure the batter really alleviates that problem. Overall these were a huge success and perfect for adapting to other holidays or events.

Red, White and Blue Sangria

I always look forward to the summer holidays, because they mean lots of picnics and barbecues, and I always love an excuse to eat outside. Its are also a good chance to make patriotic food and drinks. This is the kind of drink that is great to make for a crowd, and could be made for Memorial Day, July 4th, Labor Day, or really any nice summer day.

This recipe and other holiday themed drinks are on punchbowl.

Ingredients:
-Strawberries, sliced
-Blueberries
-Pineapple, cut into star shapes
-2 bottles dry white wine
-1 cup Triple Sec
-1/2 cup cherry rum
-1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
-1/2 cup agave syrup

Use a cookie cutter or a template to cut the pineapple into stars

Mix all ingredients together.

  

Chill for at least four hours to let the fruit infuse into the sangria and to allow the fruit to soak up the liquid.

We made this over the weekend at Becky's lake house and left it to sit in the fridge for over 12 hours throughout the day. I think this one gets better with time and can probably be made up to 24 hours ahead of time. This made about 10-12 servings and was a hit with everyone at the party.