New Year's Starburst Cookie Platter

Did you make any New Year’s Resolutions this year? I made a few. One is to be more punctual with my commitments. As you can see from this very late New Year’s post, it’s a work in progress. I have my mind set to be more proactive with my blog posts this year. Hopefully, like getting motivated to go to the gym, this resolution won’t die out by the end of February.  Fingers crossed.

Anyhoo, here’s a New Year’s starburst cookie platter idea I’d like to share. It may be late for New Year’s, but this starburst design could easily be modified for birthdays or 4th of July parties.

Preparing the Dough

To make this starburst cookie platter, you'll need a set of star cookie cutters like the ones below. It just depends on how large you want you platter to be. For this tutorial, I went with the multicolored set shown on the bottom left. You can find most of these star cutter sets on Amazon, but I happened to find the multicolored one at Target a year or two ago.

After rolling out the cookie dough, press a star shape in the dough. Before removing the shape, take a knife and line up its edge with two points of the star and cut into the dough. Do the same with the opposite side of the star. It should create a pointed triangle shape as shown below.

I should note that cutting these shapes works best if the dough is really chilled and hard. If you feel the dough softening, pop it back in the fridge for30 minutes.

Remove the whole shape and place on a baking sheet. Repeat this for 3 different size stars. For this platter, I needed 7 cookie pieces for each star size, plus one big star to put in the middle. That is a total of 22 pieces. I also made sure to make extra pieces for any mess ups.

Decorating Process

For decorating this New Year's starburst cookie platter, you will need piping and flood icing in 3 different colors of your choice. I went with gold and silver tones for a glitzy feel associated with most New Year's Eve parties.

Step 1

After the cookie pieces are baked, outline and flood the star shape with gold icing. You should still be able to see the star shape in the dough after baking. Just outline over the star edge lines. Let this icing set for 15 minutes.

Step 2

With dark gray icing, outline half of the bottom part and the opposite side area of the star, as shown below. fill the middles with flood icing. Let this icing set for 15 minutes.

Step 3

Outline the remaining areas with light gray icing, then fill the middles with flood icing. Let the cookie dry for at least an hour.

Step 4

After the cookie icing had time to set and dry, finish up by going over the edges with piping icing. I used a PME  1.5 tip for all the outlining. Repeat this process for all the 21 pieces.

Arranging the Starburst Cookie Platter

After all the cookies had time to dry completely, it's time to arrange the platter. These cookies can be arranged with any shape platter dish you have available. A large oval dish is what I had handy, but I think a large circle platter would be more ideal.

To arrange the platter, first start with the largest of the star pieces. Space them evenly in a circle with the pointed ends pointed towards the center.

Next, place the medium sized star pieces in between the larger star pieces.

Then, layer the smallest of the star pieces on top where you see gaps from the other pieces.

Lastly, add a large star cookie in the middle on top of it all. That's it!  

Here's another view of the starburst cookie platter at an angle. You can see how it stacks about 3 layers high. Pretty stellar, right?

I'm excited to see what 2015 has in store for this blog. I have a few ideas brewing that I can't wait to share. I hope you all stick around for them and I wish you all the best in the new year.