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4th of July Sugar Cookies with Sprinkles Inside! - SweetAmbs

4th of July Sugar Cookies with Sprinkles Inside!

3 bow shaped cookies decorated with red, white, and blue royal icing with a tie dye effect. The cookies are surrounded by 4th of July decorations. The right side of the image shows one of the cookies broken open with red, white, and blue sprinkles spilling out.

This Independence Day, surprise your loved ones with 4th of July sugar cookies filled with sprinkles!

Watch the video and get the full supply list below!

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A bow shaped cookie decorated with red, white, and blue royal icing with a tie dye effect being held by a hand with red, white, and silver nail polish with stars and stripes. There are red, white, and blue sprinkles in the background.

How To Make 4th of July Sugar Cookies

To make my cookies extra festive, I added red and blue gel food coloring to the dough and marbled the colors together. This step is optional, but if you wanted to skip the royal icing, the colorful dough on its own would be plenty of decoration for these cookies.

Hands pressing a bow shaped cookie cutter in a red, white, and blue marbled sheet of cookie dough. The fingernails are decorated with red, white, blue, and silver 4th of July nail polish with Stars and Stripes.

To make a cut-out to hold the sprinkles in the cookies, you’ll need 4 separate cookies: a top piece, a bottom piece, and 2 pieces with the center cut out where the sprinkles will go.

Hands assembling red, white, and blue bow shaped cookies with a well in the center. The fingernails are decorated with red, blue, and silver nail polish with Stars and Stripes.

Then you can fill the well with patriotic sprinkles and attach the decorated cookie.

A spoon filling a sugar cookie with red, white, and blue sprinkles. The cookie is shaped like a bow and is marbled with red, white, and blue.

Supplies for making sugar cookies filled with sprinkles

Instructions for making sprinkle-filled cookies for 4th of July

Bake the cookies

  1. Make the cookie dough. Separate the dough into 3 equal pieces. Wrap one piece in plastic and place it into the refrigerator. 
  2. Add 4 to 5 drops of Super Red food coloring to one of the pieces of dough. Fold the dough until the color is mixed in (you can wear gloves to protect your hands from stains). Wrap the dough in plastic and place it into the refrigerator.
  3. Add 4 to 5 drops of Royal Blue food coloring to the third piece of dough. Fold the dough until the color is mixed in. Wrap the dough in plastic and place it into the refrigerator. Allow the dough to chill for an hour or up to 3 days. 
  4. Remove the dough from the refrigerator. Break all three colors of the dough into 1” to 2” pieces and place them onto a piece of parchment paper. Cover the dough with another piece of parchment paper and roll it out to a little less than ¼” thick. Place the sheet of dough into the refrigerator to chill for about 30 minutes. 

Cut the cookies

  1. Remove the dough from the fridge and cut it with the bow cookie cutters. To make the center cut-outs, press the larger bow cookie cutter gently into the bow to make an outline. Use the smaller bow cookie cutter to cut a hole, then use the larger bow cookie cutter again to cut fully through the dough. Try to keep the dough in the cutter while you transfer it to the baking sheet to help keep its shape. You will need 2 full bows and 2 bows with cut-outs to make 1 sprinkle-filled cookie. 
  2. Carefully press the scraps together to re-roll them into a sheet. Be careful not to mix the colors too much. Chill the sheet and cut more cookies. 
  3. Bake the cookies at 350˚ Fahrenheit for 10-12 minutes. Allow them to cool completely before decorating. 
A bow shaped cookie decorated with red, white, and blue royal icing in a tie dye effect broken open with sprinkles spilling out

Ice the cookies

  1. While the cookies are cooling, make the royal icing according to the instructions. The icing should hold a stiff peak. 
  2. Set aside about ⅓ cup of stiff consistency icing. Add a teaspoon of water at a time to the rest of the royal icing to thin it to flood consistency. To test the consistency, take a scoop of icing out of the bowl and drop it back in. It should take 15 to 20 seconds to be completely smooth.
  3. Fit a decorating bag with a coupler and a decorating tip 3. Fill the bag with a few scoops of flood consistency icing. Secure the top of the bag with a rubber band or bag tie to keep the icing from spilling out as you decorate. 
  4. Place a couple of drops of red and blue airbrush food coloring into a paint palette or small dishes. Add a few drops of vodka, grain alcohol, or any flavor extract. 
  5. Use an edible ink marker to outline the sections of the bow. 
  6. Fill in the two top loops of the bow with flood consistency icing. Use the scribe tool to help shape the icing.

Decorate the cookies

  1. Apply the airbrush color to the wet icing with a brush. Drag the scribe tool through the icing to create a tie dye effect. When dragging the scribe tool, start from the center and move out toward the edges of the cookie.
  2. Fill in the tails of the bow with flood consistency icing and repeat step 14 to create a tie dye effect. 
  3. Allow the icing to crust over for about 15-20 minutes before filling in and painting the remaining bow loops. Let the icing crust over for another 15-20 minutes and repeat the process again for the bow center. Allow the icing to dry for about 2 hours.
  4. Add a few drops of water to the stiff consistency icing to thin it down slightly. 
  5. Fit a decorating bag with a coupler and a decorating tip 1. Fill the bag with the slightly thinned stiff consistency icing.
  6. Outline each section of the bow. 

Assemble the cookies

  1. Assemble the cookies by piping a little bit of the slightly thinned stiff icing to the back of one of the center cut-out pieces. Attach it to an un-iced bow cookie.
  2. Pipe icing on the back of another center cut-out piece and stack it on top of the first. 
  3. Fill the hole in the center with sprinkles.
  4. Pipe icing on the back of the decorated bow cookie and place it over the sprinkle filled cookie. 

Enjoy the cookies right away or allow them to dry overnight before packaging them.

Amber Spiegel, founder of SweetAmbs, is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and the author of Cookie Art: Sweet Designs for Special Occasions. Amber has over 12 years of cookie decorating experience and has traveled the world teaching others how to decorate beautiful cookies on their own.

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