How To Make A Gourmet Cookie Bouquet

Gourmet Cookie Bouquets are such a treat to receive–but they can get pretty expensive to buy. Here’s a sugar cookie recipe plus instructions for putting together a cookie bouquet–they make great gifts and it’s fun to make your own!

Soft Sugar Cookies Recipe

4 cups flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup butter* (room temperature)
3/4 cup sour cream
2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
3/4 tsp nutmeg
2 eggs

*Must use butter, not margarine

wooden skewers, chopsticks, lollipop or popsicle sticks
cellophane, curling ribbon (to wrap and decorate cookies)
styrofoam or green floral foam (to anchor cookies in container)
gift container (to hold cookie bouquet–bottom heavy is ideal)
tissue paper (to tuck in above foam and between cookie sticks)
bag of decorative garden rocks (optional)

Directions:

Sift the dry ingredients together.
Cream butter, slowly add sugar. Add vanilla and eggs. Alternately beat in sour cream and dry ingredients.
Chill for 1 hour.
Roll out to 1/4″ thickness and cut into shapes, you can use as large as you like and whatever shape you wish–just make sure you’ll have skewers long enough to hold cookie.
Press wooden skewers into cookies with the stick anchored in dough about 2″. If making quite large cookies, it’s best to fit the skewers through most of the length–till about 1″ from the top.
Bake for 10 minutes at 450 degrees–cookies will be done when edges are golden.
Remove cookie sheet from oven, but allow cookies to sit for a minute or two before moving to cooling rack. Do not handle the cookies by the sticks at this point, they’ll pull out and fall apart.
After cookies are cool, decorate them as you like.
Carefully wrap in cellophane once icing and decorations are fully set, tie a ribbon bow around the top of each stick (just under the cookie).
Arrange in baskets, vases, terra cotta pots, coffee mugs, cookie jars–whatever you like! Just stick some styrofoam to fit snugly in the container, then stick the skewered cookies firmly in the styrofoam.
Weave and bunch in tissue paper to cover the foam and add an extra decorative touch to your cookie bouqet.
If the container is tipsy and threatening to fall over, you’ll need to anchor with some weight. Clean pebbles, garden rocks or clean sand work fine. You can also give the cookies individually rather than full bouquets.