12 Fourth of July Desserts That'll Make You Go "What?!"

Long gone are the days when a simple strawberry pie or a bowlful of ice cream sufficed as a Fourth of July dessert. Now, things are bigger, badder, and red, white, and blue-er. There are fireworks and Pop Rocks and iterations upon iterations of the American flag.

 

Is it fun? Is it madness? That's for you to decide. (We, for the record, think it's a bit of both.) Here are 12 Fourth of July desserts that are patriotic in the most extreme, sugary sense.

 

And, hey, if none of these are your thing, there's plenty of pie and ice cream out there still.

 

1.) These "Fireworks" cupcakes with Pop Rocks and sparklers.

 

 

2.) This impossibly immaculate flag cake. 

 

 

3.) These dizzying Fireworks Cookies. 

 

 

4.) Stop it, Martha.

 

 

5.) This pattern, pinwheel madness. 

 

 

6.)  Look at that patriotic lattice work. 

 

 

7.) Look at the swirls in this Red, White, and Blue Velvet Zebra Bundt Cake. 

 

 

8.) Well, these sugar cookies are adorable (those stripes, though). 

 

 

9.) What's even happening here. 

 

 

10.) These cakelettes seem like a lot of work. 

 

 

11.) And more firecrackers and Pop Rocks. 

 

 

12.) The real question is, would you drink this?