Sparkling Flower Sugar Cookies
I love spring, and I’m so happy that it is finally here. To celebrate that, I designed a sugar cookie that’s filled with colorful spring flowers. This project is somewhat labor intensive, but it is so much fun. It would be a great project to do with your kids or with friends. Or by yourself!
It is a very basic sugar cookie which is made of simple ingredients: butter, sugar, flour, salt, baking powder, egg, and vanilla.
Cream the butter and sugar, then add the egg and vanilla.
Whisk the flour, salt, and baking powder together, and then gradually add to the butter snd sugar mixture.
It will be crumbly like this, but use your hands to knead the dough together until it’s smooth.
These are some of the gel colors I used. As you can see, I like several brands. You can find the Sunny Side Up brand at Hobby Lobby or order it here. The ones in the middle are by Wilton and I got the kit at Michael’s. It can be ordered here. The AmeriColor brand can be found as a kit online here. I also buy the Americolor brand locally at Louise’s Cakes and Supply.
There is no reason in the world why you should use three different brands. I just have a large variety of gel food colors.
I decided to make my dough colors very vibrant because they fade a bit during baking. Just add a couple of drops of coloring to each ball of dough. It will appear very streaky at first. Don’t panic. Just keep squeezing and blending it until you get a nice, even color. Wear gloves if you want to because it can stain your hands. It will wash off, though…eventually.
These are the colors I ended up with. If they are too intense, use some of your reserved plain dough to mix in with each color to lighten it up. I later did that with the green and blue.
I rolled out each color into disks, placed them on a cookie sheet and put them in the fridge for a few minutes. It makes them much easier to work with. You can return to to the fridge periodically as needed when the dough becomes too warm and soft to work with.
I normally use plunger cutters for my flower cut outs, but I had apparently misplaced them. I had to settle for all of this hodgepodgery instead, which actually ended up working out fine. I used the offset spatula to lift the flowers after I’d cut them and the toothpick to get dough out of the cutters when it got stuck. You can find the flower cutters I lost here. I guess I’m going to be ordering some now, too.
Roll the dough out onto a lightly floured surface to about 1/4″ thickness.
Cut with your cookie cutter.
Then cut the desired flower shapes out of your cookie.
As you can see, all of your shapes you cut out can then be used as inlays to fill other cookies.
Precut leaf shapes from the green dough.
I kept all of my cutouts in a container so I’d have them ready to pop into other cookies
Cut the flower and leaf shapes you want to fill out of your cookie, then fill with the inlays you’ve already cut out. It’s a little difficult to explain, but I’m hoping the photos will help. The edges might not touch, but they will connect when they bake.
For the centers, I poked a small hole with a toothpick and rolled the dough color I wanted into a tiny ball, and then pressed it down into the hole. It was like working little puzzles with edible play doh. I had some pretty strong play doh skills as a kid, so it was nice to draw from that.
Sprinkle with some sparkling sugar.
Bake at 350° for about 8 minutes. They are just so pretty.
These would be great for a spring party or to give as little gifts in cello bags.
Sparkling Flower Sugar Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup 2 sticks butter, softened
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 egg
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
- 3 cups all purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- Gel or paste food coloring. I used pink blue, yellow, green, and lavender.
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°.
- Line cookie sheets with parchment paper.
- In a large bowl, cream butter until fluffy. Beat in sugar, then add egg and vanilla.
- In a small bowl, whisk flour, baking powder, and salt together.
- Gradually add flour to butter mixture. It will be crumbly.
- Using hands, blend the crumbly dough together until nice and smooth.
- Divide into 6 balls.
- Add food coloring to desired shade to 5 of the balls, and leave one without added color.
- On a floured surface, roll dough to a 1/4" thickness and cut with round cookie cutter.
- Cut shapes out of the cookies and interchange the colors. Refer to post for photos.
- Sprinkle with sparkling sugar.
- Bake at 350° for about 8 minutes.
