Red, White, & Blue Pinwheel Cookies

These Red, White, & Blue Pinwheel Cookies are a fun, festive, and simple treat for your 4th of July celebrations.

They are just simple sugar cookies. However, because you need to add food coloring, roll out the dough, stack the dough, roll it up, and chill the dough, they do require a little more patience. But it's a fun activity to do either by yourself or with your kids. Elayne really enjoyed helping me!

Here’s how to make them:
I made the cookie dough using my normal Sugar Cookies recipe.

Then, divide the dough into 3 bowls. Add red food coloring to one bowl and mix well. Add blue food coloring to another bowl and again mix well. The third bowl can be left as is.

Roll out a large piece of saran wrap. Take the blue dough and use a rolling pin to roll out the dough pretty thin.

Next, you need to roll out the white dough and then the red dough.
When I made mine, I tried rolling out the blue, and then placing the white on top of the blue and rolling it out. Then I placed the red on top of the white and rolled it out. This mostly worked. But the problem was that the blue continued to spread with every rolling.

I think next time, I’ll roll each color separately. And then I’ll stack them on top of each other. The most difficult part of this approach will be transferring the dough without it breaking apart. I recommend rolling each color dough on a separate sheet of saran wrap. Then, pick up the saran wrap of the natural color dough and flip the dough on top of the blue. Repeat the same process with the red. I think this approach will turn out cleaner than mine did.

Now, roll the stacked dough in tight spirals. Completely cover the roll of dough in saran wrap, and place it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes to chill. Having the dough chilled will make it easier to slice without being squished down.

Once the dough is chilled, take it out of the fridge. Unwrap it, and slice the dough into relatively thin slices. Dip each cookie into a bowl of sugar, and place it on a greased baking sheet. Bake 8-10 minutes, til the cookies are just starting to brown at the edges.
Don’t let the cookies cool too long on the pan, or they will get too browned.