These Memorial Day cookies are like mini fruit pizzas with cream cheese frosting, strawberry star cut-outs, and blueberries. As a bonus, they’re food coloring-free and much simpler than your usual decorated cookie. These red, white and blue cookies can be made with all-purpose, white whole wheat or gluten-free flour.

Why, hello! It’s been a while.

I know I just missed Memorial Day, but these patriotic cookies would also be fantastic for July 4th.

Or any day! They’re so cheery. For Christmas, you could use the red strawberry stars and mint leaves for some holiday cookies.

And for the summer, you can take almost any fruit (I talk about this below) to make mini fruit pizza cookies.

I love the combination of almond extract and berries, but if you prefer, you could use lemon extract instead, along with some extra lemon zest for added flavor.

If you don’t want either, vanilla works just fine. If you don’t use berries, ensure your extract matches your fruit. Stone fruit also goes great with almond extract.

I probably wouldn’t pair mango or melon with almond extract, though.

Ingredients

You don’t need anything fancy for these cookies. Just your basic sugar cookie ingredients.

The cookies are similar to Lofthouse cookies or sugar cookies. They’re soft and pillowy, but not cakey, but firm enough for the cream cheese frosting and fruit.

Easy to make

I find these cookies much easier to make than the usual cut-out sugar cookies you see for the Fourth of July or Memorial Day.

Maybe it’s just me, but using star cookie cutters can often be problematic. The points of the stars brown too quickly.

And I don’t love the time it takes to roll out the dough, use finicky cookie cutters and then transfer the stars onto the baking sheet. Then reroll and recut because the corners stuck to the tips of the star cookie cutter.

So with these cookies, you just cut stars out of strawberries for your decoration. And pop on some blueberries for the blue portion of these red, white, and blue cookies.

How long can these cookies sit out?

Chilled and decorated cookies can sit out for 3-4 hours. If it’s hot, like at a summer picnic, don’t have them sit out longer than an hour. You can also keep them in a cooler.

Non-chilled cookies (meaning you frosted and decorated them just now) can sit out for about an hour.

How to store them

Refrigerate frosted but undecorated cookies in an airtight container for up to 3 days. Don’t stack them!

Unfrosted cookies can be kept in an airtight container for up to 4 days. Those can be stacked.

I would recommend putting on the fruit a few hours before serving and chilling the decorated cookies to firm up the cream cheese frosting. This keeps the fruit fresh and prevents the frosting from getting runny.

Can I freeze them?

You can freeze unfrosted cookies or the dough for up to 3 months. You can also freeze the frosted cookies if you have leftovers.

But pick off the fruit first. You definitely don’t want to freeze the cookies with fruit on top as fruit doesn’t freeze so well (except for things like smoothies, sauces, etc).

What to do with fruit scraps from the stars

Freeze and add to smoothies, like this Strawberry Green Smoothie
Add to a salad
Sprinkle on top of this Healthy Chocolate Cake
Make strawberry-infused water
Use them in these Chocolate Covered Strawberry Cheesecake Popsicles
Make strawberry syrup, like I used in this Strawberry Latte

What other fruit can I use?

One that’s not too watery. Watermelon is great to use with cookie cutters (and in this watermelon slushie!), but I’d fear watermelon would make the frosting runny.

By the way, I used these cookie cutters. You get three different sizes: 1.6-inch, 1.3-inch, and 1-inch. I used the 1-inch cutters for these cookies. I recommend using metal cutters for a cleaner cut than what you get with plastic.

If you don’t want to use cookie cutters but do want to keep the red, white, and blue theme, you could use blue grapes (here are 10 types of blue grapes), raspberries, blackberries, or cherries.

If you don’t care about the color, then peaches and pineapple are a great choice. You can also use bananas and apple pieces if you brush them with some lemon juice before placing on the frosting and quickly serve. And if you have a lot of peaches on hand, try this great Gluten-free Peach Cobbler!

If you want to skip the fruit altogether but still want something festive, check out these Fourth of July Cookies!

Whole grain option

You can make these cookies with white whole wheat flour. If you do that, I’d recommend adding a tablespoon of lemon zest.

White whole wheat tastes almost like all-purpose, flour. Almost.

Adding a little lemon zest will cover up the very slight whole grain taste. Or you can use almond extract, which is what I did.

I do not recommend using regular whole wheat flour unless you want your cookies to have a strong whole wheat flavor.

Gluten-free option

There’s no way to make these cookies paleo, but I made them gluten-free by using King Arthur Flour Measure for Measure Gluten-free Flour.

Will they have the right texture if you use another brand? I can’t say without trying.

I often use Bob’s Red Mill Gluten-free 1-to-1 Baking Flour, but I have a feeling that the cookies would have been much heavier and sandier with that flour.

The one from King Arthur Flour is my favorite gluten-free flour blend. I’ve heard Cup4Cup is great, too, but it contains an ingredient I can’t have, so I haven’t tried it.

If you’d like a grain-free version, you can use my Almond Flour Sugar Cookies and simply add the strawberry stars and blueberries on top. Or try this paleo Fruit Pizza!

Dairy-free and vegan option?

I think the cream cheese frosting makes these cookies, so I would recommend finding a recipe that’s already dairy-free. Then there’s the issue of the eggs and butter.

The flavor of butter is definitely better than that of coconut oil in these cookies, and it’s not a 1:1 sub, anyway.

And my usual egg sub, a chia egg, would result in likely unappetizing specks in the cookies. So I didn’t even bother with trying a vegan version.

If you do try one out, please let me know in the comments how it went!

Can I omit the frosting and put the berries on top of the cookie dough?

No, because strawberries are too wet. You could put on the blueberries (provided they’ve been pat dry with paper towels), and maybe some freeze-dried strawberries on top, but I highly recommend the frosting method.

They’ll definitely both taste and look better!

That’s it! I hope you’ll enjoy the cookies. Please let me know below in the comments if you try them out! Thanks so much. 🙂

5 from 86 votes