What’s better than a frosted sugar cookie, you ask? A frosted sugar cookie decorated with edible flowers! I have made these cookies twice now and both times they were hands down the biggest hit of the party. Decorating the cookies can be a bit time consuming but they end up so beautiful and they taste so amazing that it is a hundred percent worth it.
I first heard about edible floral cookies when my friend Sally gifted me a box from Alma Kitchen Co and I was instantly in heaven. Alma’s is no longer taking orders so I decided to try my hand at making them myself and found out that once you get your hands on the correct ingredients, it can easily be done.
I could not find a place locally to source my edible flowers but I found a place in California, Gourmet Sweet Botanicals, that had the perfect assortment of 200ct mini edible flowers. You can place your order in advance and they package it on ice and ship overnight so you have them on the day you plan to bake. With the cost of the flowers and the shipping, you end up spending about $45-50 just for the flowers. But the remaining ingredients you probably already have in your cupboard!
To give you a timeline so you can plan ahead, I had the flowers arriving on Thursday, placed them in the fridge over night, baked the cookies Friday afternoon, and then once the kids all went to bed I had a raging Friday night decorating the cookies with a new podcast and a Taylor Swift playlist from about 9pm-11pm. So without further hesitation, lets get into the recipe:
The Ingredient List
- 4 cups of sifted all-purpose flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp salt
- 1.5 sticks softened butter
- 1.5 cups sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1.5 tsp vanilla extract
- royal icing (I make my own with 2 cups powder sugar, 3tbl milk, 1 egg white)
- edible flowers
the Recipe
preheat oven to 350
- In first bowl, add 4 cups sifted flour, 2tsp baking powder, and 1 tsp salt. Mix well.
- In a separate bowl, add 1.5 sticks of softened butter and 1/5 cups of cups of sugar. Beat until fluffy.
- Add 2 eggs and 1.5 tsp vanilla. Continue to beat well.
- Stir the dry ingredients, adding in 1/3 at a time, until you get a smooth and stiff dough.
- Lightly dust your wax paper with powder sugar and roll out the dough
- Cut into 1/4 inch thick circle cookies
- Bake for 10 minutes until firm and just lightly golden brown and then cool completely.
- Once cooled, coat the top of the cookie with a layer of royal icing.
- Do not wait for this to cool! Immediately add your flowers onto the cookie. Set aside to dry and voila!
Here is the link for my standing mixer and the nonstick cookies sheets that I love as well as where to purchase the edible flowers. Also helpful is a roller (or you can just use a clean wine bottle), a cooling rack (although I sometimes just leave them in the cookie sheet to cool if you have enough cookie sheets), a cookie cutter (although I use my favorite round drinking glass to make my circles), and a good clean pair of tweezers for grabbing and placing the flowers.
Oh I’m definitely going to try this!
So how long after you receive the flowers do you need to bake? Also, after you make the cookies, how do you store them? Do you need Ho eat the same day? Thank you.
Great questions. So their website says: “Enjoy within 5 days for best flavor, although they can keep up to 7 days refrigerated.” I store the cookies in the refrigerator because of the egg whites in the royal icing and also the flowers are perishable. Then I usually pull them out an hour before and have them get to room temperature on the counter before I serve them. And usually I make them the night before and serve them the next day just because they take so long to make but I’m sure you can make them two days in advance if you needed to. Any longer than that the flowers might wilt.