Cookie Bouquet

My sister gave me this KitchenAid mixer for my birthday, and her only condition was that she gets the first thing that I make with it. Hmm...I knew that this had to be something good. She's a chocolate fan, but I've already been doing so much chocolate lately, I thought I'd try a Cookie Bouquet. After scouring the internet for days searching for the perfect recipe, I finally found it. I used the "Michelle Bommarito’s Sugar Cookies For Sticks" recipe that I found on the Cookie Madness blog.

INGREDIENTS:
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 sticks butter, unsalted, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
dash of almond extract
Meringue-Powder Icing

DIRECTIONS:
Sift together the flour and baking powder. In a mixing bowl, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Stir in the egg, salt and both extracts.

Slowly add flour mixture (1 cup at a time) and stir until incorporated

Form the dough into a disc and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour. (I found that it needed to refrigerate overnight in my refrigerator.)

Preheat oven to 375°. Roll the dough onto a lightly floured surface to approximately 5/8″ thick. Cut the cookies into shapes and place the cut cookie shape on a parchment lined cookie; Poke a stick into cookies.

Bake the cookies for approximately 8-10 minutes or until the edges begin to turn golden brown in color. Remove cookies from the oven and allow to cool on a wire rack for 5 minutes.

THE PROCESS:

I tried two different methods of putting the stick into the cookie. The first was to press the stick into the back of the cookie, then cover it with a bit of rolled dough and press it together. This method tended to let the cookies "spin" around the stick after they were baked.


The second was to carefully push the stick straight up into the cookie. I think that this method worked the best, but I had to be really careful to go STRAIGHT and level into the cookie. I had a few that were slightly at an angle and had to re-roll the cookies.



Cookies cooling on their sticks after being baked. Be sure that the cookies are COMPLETELY cool before trying to frost them.





My friend, Stacey, was in town and helped decorate the cookies. For this particular icing recipe, we found the easiest method is to use a knife to frost the cookies, then gently shake the cookies back and forth to smooth out the icing before it sets. This seems so much easier to me then the outline-and-flood method!

Our cookies setting out to dry. We frosted each cookie with a different color and let that set. The dots in the middle of the flowers were "painted" on with a cookie stick. When that was dry, we used a piping bag to pipe on the white outline. Be sure to let the icing COMPLETELY dry (preferably overnight) before bagging them up or stacking them.

Once the cookies were dry, we stuck them inside a clear cookie/treat bag (you can find them at large craft stores in the baking aisle) and wrapped the bottom with a silver twist tie. To make our bouquet, we put floral foam into the bottom of a 6" clay pot (I used a 6" round ball). We then stuck the cookies in at various heights and angles, then stuffed the moss around the bottom of the sticks to cover the foam. In hindsight, it would have been MUCH easier to lay the moss down, then stick the cookies in. A pretty pink bow was the finishing touch.

Ashley with her cookie bouquet! She loved it! :)











CREDIT: "Michelle Bommarito’s Sugar Cookies For Sticks" from the Cookie Madness blog