Election day cookies

I've been waiting for November 6, 2012 for 4 years. Four long years of boring cookies, shaped like hearts and stars; sometimes iced red, sometimes blue, but never red and blue together.

Finally, that day is almost close enough to taste.

And let me tell you, it tastes pretty good.

I had binders full of recipes crying out for the opportunity to be made. But for this day I knew there was only one choice. Sorry, special interest recipes: we can't make every gluten-intolerant gourmand happy today.

No: The best cookie for the job is the classic sugar cookie, slathered with a little red, white and blue.

The recipe is from Bon Appetit's December issue a few years ago. I think next election it would be fun to make the little elephants and donkeys two different flavors, and have a mini election: let the best cookie win!

Here's how to get that icing effect:

1. Ice the cookie one solid color. You want to use royal icing because it hardens and gets a nice glossy look when it dries.

2. Fill a plastic bag with a different color icing than you started with. Snip a small hole in the corner of the bag. Pipe straight lines onto the cookie.

3. Draw a toothpick or skewer in a straight line thorugh the cookie, going the opposite way of your icing lines.

Try it with a few different colors.

This is a great way to decorate Christmas cut-out cookies, too!

To prevent cookie burn-out, I always make my dough on one day, roll it out and bake the cookies the next day, and on the third day, I decorate (and eat). That way I don't get sick of them and give up on decorating them nicely because I've been in the kitchen all day.
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