I’ve been given the happy job of baking kid’s July 4th treats for a beach party this week. Anything sticky was out of the question…that’s just asking for a sandy snack!

I chose this easy sugar cookie recipe and found a fun starfish cookie cutter in my collection.

The decorative frosting was created by mixing 1 1/2 cups of icing/confectioners sugar with 2 tablespoons of water and some food coloring gel. I used the cookie cutter’s design to guide me, and dropped little dots of icing with a bamboo skewer along the spots on the starfish. Warning: this is extremely time consuming! But a lovely meditative exercise.

Eventually I ran out of time and buttered icing over the rest of the cookies and decorated them with colored sugar.

Crunchy, sweet, and delicious!

Recipe: Sugar cookies (source: goodhousekeeping.com)