Let's get Creative with Cookies

Our grandson, Simon, was born on Valentine's Day and in keeping with our family tradition a themed party was in order.

For this special occasion, I decided that my offering would be a cookie bouquet.

I had just recently heard about this creative new way to combine a bit of artistic skill with cooking and it seemed like a perfect match.

COOKIES:

• Use your favorite sugar cookie recipe to create dough.

• Refrigerate for at least an hour - I prefer overnight.

• Roll out dough on parchment paper to a thickness between 1/4 - 1/2''. I experimented and found that it's really not structurally necessary to go extremely thick, so just use your preference.

• After cutting your cookies in the desired shapes, insert a wooden skewer all of the way through the height of the cookie, making sure that your skewer is thoroughly covered with dough.

• Try to keep cookies as flat as possible and don't pick up using the 'stem'.

• Bake at the time and temperature recommended by your recipe and allow to cool thoroughly before moving.

FROSTING:

• Make your favorite recipe of sugar cookie frosting and tint using food coloring liquid or gel.

• Decorate your cookies after they have thoroughly cooled.

TIPS: if your frosting is runny you can let it drip over the sides creating a 'dipped' effect. To solidify your frosting simply add confectioners sugar until the desired consistency is achieved. As long as you are careful you can add different colors to the cookie instead drying between colors. For best results, let frosting dry overnight before assembly.

ASSEMBLY:

Using a flower vase and a packing material (I used clear glass marbles) arrange your cookie 'flowers'. I found that adding a few flowers at a time and then partially filling vase worked best. This will also allow for multi-level arrang

ing. When your 'bouquet' is arranged to your satisfaction, pour in the remaining marbles nearly to the top.

Voilà! Your Cookie Flower Bouquet is complete for display AND eating...beautiful and tasty!

CARS:

For the car cookies I drew a car on a piece of cardboard and cut it out. Then I laid it on the cookie dough and used a knife to cut out my shape by tracing alongside the cardboard.

I used Simon's favorite color - yellow - for most of the cars but made a few green and red ones as well.

For the lug nuts I used round cookie sprinkles and I put some white frosting into a ziplock sandwich baggy, snipped off a tiny portion of the corner and used this as my 'piping bag'.