Flower cookies recipe

These flower cookies look impressive and take longer to decorate than to bake but with some practise you’ll soon be an expert. 

Our easy chocolate chip cookies are chewy and delicious but if you want something that looks a little more spectacular, this is the recipe for you. Using shop bought sugarpaste is an effective and quick way to make your cookies look professional. 

Ingredients

For the cookies:

• 25g unsalted butter, softened
• 150g caster sugar
• Pinch of salt
• 1 medium egg
• 250g plain flour
• Few drops of vanilla extract

For the decoration:

• Approx 500g sugarpaste in assorted colours, eg, pink, blue, yellow and orange
• 500g packet royal icing sugar
• Paste food colourings in blue, yellow, pink and orange
• Sugar-coated chocolates, eg, Smarties

You will also need:

• Blossom-shaped cookie cutters
• Piping bags and plain writing piping tubes, eg, No 2

Method

1. Set the oven to 160C (140C fan, Gas 3). Cream together the butter, sugar and salt, until the mixture is light and fluffy. Beat in the egg with a spoonful of flour. Beat in the vanilla extract and then the rest of the flour, until the mixture binds together to form a dough. If the dough is very soft, put it in a plastic bag and chill until it’s firm enough to roll out.
2. Roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface to about 5mm thick and use the cutters to cut out an assortment of sizes. Place them on lined baking sheets.
3. Bake the biscuits for 15-20 minutes, or until the cookies start to turn golden at the edges. Remove from the oven and slide the cookies on to a wire rack. Decorate immediately, so that the sugarpaste will stick to them from the heat of the biscuits.
4. Knead the sugarpaste to soften it and roll out on a surface lightly dusted with icing sugar. Use the cutters to cut out shapes and press on to the warm biscuits.
5. Colour the royal icing with your choice of colourings and fill piping bags with the writing tubes. Pipe petal shapes on the cookies and place a sweet in the centre of each flower before the royal icing dries.
6. Leave the icing to dry and set before serving.

Top tips for making flower cookies

You can flavour your cookies with other extracts instead like almond, orange or caramel. Another easy flavour boost is adding the zest or an orange or lemon to the biscuit dough. 

Jessica Ransom

“I always think a homemade edible gift is perfect for any occasion. You can customise the shape of your biscuit depending on the occasion and match the colours to the recipient’s favourites. These biscuits would be great as a gift from little ones to their grandparents or teachers and if they are a little rustic looking, they will still taste amazing.”  

With this adjustable rolling pin you can be confident you’ve rolled the biscuit dough and sugar paste to the correct thickness. It’s one of our best kitchen gadgets under £50.

Joseph Joseph Adjustable Rolling Pin - View at Amazon 

This rolling pin is very useful for rolling biscuit dough, icing and pastry. There are four different sizes to choose from and they are dishwasher safe for easy cleaning.

Try this sugar cookies recipe next and then bake a batch of our vanilla cookies too. You might also like our Snickerdoodle cookies.