sunflower cookies

My wonderful niece3 asked me about some ideas for cookies for her friend’s daughter’s B-day who is turning 2. At 2, the kidlettes would be happy with a popsicle split in half but we know the party is really for adults anyway so let’s bring some fun cookies to show off!I thought about rainbows, smiley faces, ladybugs and sunflowers. Since I was making more fall cookies last night to send to college boy1 and had the colors ready to go I decided to see what I could come up with since I had not made ladybugs before and only made sunflowers once many moons ago.

Here is what I came up with…

I am naming this ladybug ‘Tammy Faye.’
A little too much mascara (icing too thin so it spread)
but she does have a perfect pout!

Dots or hearts on the wings?
Hmmm.

I am naming this lady bug “Tyra” because she smiles with her eyes.
I think Tyra coined the term “smize.”

Or we could always get the Raid and start all over.

Note: I would NEVER oft a real ladybug!

I didn’t have a small, round, smooth cutter for the ladybugs so I used a votive candle holder and then used a very small crinkle biscuit cutter for the head. The body and head fit perfectly together because I cut the head from the left over scraps of the body positioning the head cutter a little into where I had cut the body from. Therefore, the head cookie had a curve to it.
Does that make sense? Good. 🙂

Put a little water on the two pieces of the cookie edges and bake them touching and you have one cookie at the end of 12 minutes. Ta-Da!!

The sunflowers are cut from using a bar glass (I guess I need some plain edged cutters).
The petals are made using a standard leaf tip.

I pulled the leaves from the center and added chocolate chips on their sides.

They needed a little more color and sparkle so I added some green leaves and edible glitter.
When I made sunflowers before I used a nonpareil candy.

They look like large chocolate chips with little white round candy sprinkles (nonpareils) on their tops. Do you remember seeing these in the concessions counter at the movies?
Does the name Snow Caps ring a bell?
It is a prettier effect because it gives the center more interest than plain chips.

For the little kidlettes I would go smaller in size and decorate with butter cream icing because it would be just a little softer to bite into. I think the combo of the ladybugs and sunflowers would be very cute or even a whole tray of just ladybugs!

Here’s my recipe for butter cream icing.

Big secret… It’s from the C&H sugar box and it’s terrrrific!

1 lb. box powdered sugar

1/4 tsp. salt (optional)

1/4 cup milk

1 tsp. vanilla

1/3 cup butter (2/3 stick)

Beat together but hold back a little of the milk until you see if the icing is the consistency you want. If the icing is too stiff add more milk.

If you’re not used to piping with butter cream icing it does tend to soften from the heat of your hands from gripping the pastry bag so I would make it more stiff than what you would use for icing a cake. You can also get lumps blocking the tip if the butter and sugar aren’t thoroughly mixed. If you work with royal icing these two problems will never occur. Royal icing is much easier to work with in my opinion. Just a little icing comparison there. 🙂

And talk about heat making your icing melt…

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“Beautastic Give-Away”
that is going on until Tuesday.