Our Favorite July 4th Super Simple Desserts

If you've waited til the last minute, these desserts are simple ways to fire up the crowd and get a great look.

Jello Firecrackers

The key to these red, white and blue jello firecrackers desserts is the plastic shooter glasses we serve them in.  They serve the dual purpose of showing the colors off and not being too big, so your dessert goes further and people don’t feel guilty sampling everything.  Most folks add a white layer that’s either milk with plain gelatin or a more fancy lemon layer.  But, if you’re in a rush, you can skip that layer and just do red and blue jello.  If you’re really in a jam, you can use a can, which is certainly simple.  But fresh cream is so much better, and by putting it into a plastic ziplock bag an snipping off the corner, you can make it look just as pretty as the canned version. 

Red, White, and Bluewiches

If you put out a bunch of different deserts, almost certainly, the home-baked chocolate chip cookies will disappear first. Our red, white and bluewiches give a little July 4th flair to this crowd pleaser.

For the cookies we mostly follow the famous Toll House recipe with a few key tweaks: we use large fleur de sel instead of regular salt. We also try have the dough sit in the fridge for at least 24 hours before we bake them.   And this last point is key: we bake them only as much as you need to for them to stay together (but do make sure they stay together). No one ever complained a cookie was too gooey.

When the cookies are cool enough to remove easily, simply scoop ice cream between and then roll in red, white, and blue sprinkles.  A dessert that your crowd will melt over.

Watermelon Stars

Ok, we don’t claim this is really baking.  But it’s always nice to have a non-sugary dessert.  And it’s worth bearing in mind that a little creativity can make something a little more every day feel festive.  We got a star cookie cutter, which are pretty much available at every grocery store near the holidays, and we used it to create watermelon stars. We just sliced rounds of watermelon and pressed in the cutter.  They looked great on the place and were gone almost as fast as the cookies