Captain America Shortbread

These cookies are based off the shield of the one and only CAPTAIN AMERICA!   I made these once before for a party, and they were a big success.  Bear in mind that these do take a while to make, but i think they are worth the wait.

What you will need:

2 1/2 cups flour (all-purpose)
1 cup butter (2 sticks)
1/2 cup sugar (or more if you're feeling sweet)
a couple drops flavoring--I use almond and vanilla extract, but you can use whatever you like
red and blue food coloring

various circle cookie cutters (if you don't have any you can use the top of cups or make stencils to cut around)
rolling pin

Mix together all of the ingredients together except for the food coloring.    After mixing, divide the dough into three separate bowls for the three colors used.  You'll want the pure color to have to have the most dough, then the red, and lastly blue.  You don't need very much dough for blue, but be sure to make enough!  In the pictures you can see how I divided up the dough.  In the end, I had lots of extra blue.

Now might be a good time to preheat your oven, see step 7 for instructions.

Roll out the pure colored dough with your rolling pin onto some wax paper or your counter.  Use your cookie cutter (or cup) to cut out a circle.  This circle will be the base of your cookie, so be sure to choose a suitable size.  I put these cookies directly on the cookie sheet.

Roll out your red dough.  You could use the same cookie cutter used in the last step for the first cut, then use a smaller one inside of it (the first picture).  Alternatively, you could cut a long narrow strip of red with a knife and bend it around the cookie.  The second method is certainly easier and faster, but it does not look as good.  Add the outer ring to your cookies on the pan.

For this step I recommend using a small circle cookie cutter.  If you don't have one, you can roughly cut out a circle with a knife and round it off with your fingers.  Add to the center of the cookies.  Next, you wrap a thin strip of red around the blue circle for all of the cookies.

For the star, roll out the pure colored dough.  If you have a star cookie cutter, use it.

Now, if you don't have a star cookie cutter (like me) you can use a stencil of a star and cut around it, or you can just estimate the shape of a star.  Personally, I drew a star on a piece of card stock, cut it out, and then used a knife to cut around it on top of the dough.

Add the stars to the cookies.

What I did was preheat the oven to 325 degrees F and bake for 25-30 mins.  This may not work for you, because I baked mine on a stoneware cookie sheet, and a metal cookie sheet will probably work differently.  You can tell they are done when they turn a slight golden-brown color at the edges.

ding ding!  Take them out of the oven because they are done!  Wait a few minutes for them to cool before removing them from the pan.  On the last photo, you can see some variations of the shield design, which are easier to prepare.