Hey! Welcome back to Cooking with a Pan! It's now almost 4th of July, which means its time to get out all that cheesy red, white, and blue stuff. Here's a super simple cookie recipe that will fit in perfectly with any Independence Day celebration and will leave your party guests stunned. This recipe is so simple, I simply can't stress its simplicity enough. It's definitely worth a try. No regrets guaranteed :p

Step 1: Gather the Ingredients

For this recipe, we will need...

2 bars Butter
1 1/2 cups Granulated Sugar
2 Large Eggs
2 1/2 cups Flour
2 tsp Baking Powder
1/4 tsp Salt
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
Extra Sugar for Sprinkling
Red and Blue Gel Food Coloring

Step 2: Cream the Butter, Sugar, and Eggs

Beat your butter with a mixer on medium speed until the butter is nice and fluffy. Then, slowly pour in your sugar, and continue mixing until well combined. Finally, add in your two eggs, and, like always, mix until well combined. You should get a nice gooey, yellow colored mixture.

Step 3: Add in the Dry Ingredients

Pour in your flour, baking powder, and salt all at the same time (you can have these pre-combined in a bowl if you wish). Mix this on low speed until well combined. Then add the vanilla extract (I know, sorry, this is not a dry ingredient) and mix on low until combined.

Step 4: Color Your Dough

Split your cookie dough into thirds, and add a bit of red food coloring to one third, and blue food coloring to another third. Make sure the color is nice and dark, because light coloration may be subject to fading during baking. Leave the third third (not a typo) uncolored.

PS. Forgive me, my head got into the camera frame ._.

Step 5: Form the Design

The next part is the fun part, but can also the the trickier of the steps. Make a strip of red dough on a non-stick surface (parchment paper or silicon mat).The strip should be about 1 1/2 inches in width, and as long as you want it to be (make sure you have enough dough for the remaining red stripes). On top of that, make a strip of white, and on top of the white, make a strip of red (see where this is going?). These three strips are going to be the bottom three stripes on our flag. Now, go ahead and take some blue dough and add a rectangular prism strip to HALF of the top of your strip of red and white dough (ye ah, that sounds confusing, I know. If you need help, feel free to go ahead and check out the video above). This is going to serve as the blue rectangle in the corner of the flag. Because we are only going to have two more stripes, the height of the prism should be about the height of two stripes. Now, on the other half of the top, add a strip of white, and a strip of red on top of that. If you look at one of the ends of the dough prism (which side depends on how you placed the blue dough), you'll see that it now looks like a 5 striped American flag.

Step 6: Prep the Final Dough

Flip your nonstick surface over a piece of plastic wrap, and carefully peel back the surface. Wrap up the dough (be careful not to disfigure the flag), and place it in a freezer for 20 minutes.

Step 7: Cut the Dough

After 20 minutes, remove the dough from your freezer, and cut into nice thin slices (for an estimated width, look at the image above and/or the video). Place your flag slices on a cookie sheet, and sprinkle the tops with granulated sugar. Then bake the cookies at 350 degrees F for 10-12 minutes.

Step 8: Enjoy!

When your cookies just begin to brown on the edges, pull them out of the oven and let them cool. It's time to eat! If you enjoyed this recipe, please like my video on YouTube and subscribe to my channel. Also check out my Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr for more pretty photos (@joshpancooking). Thanks for all your support, and don't forget to take pictures of your finished product so I can check them out!!

Introduction: American Flag Cookies | Josh Pan