A 60th Birthday Cookie Bouquet for Helene

I started with my favorite sugar cookie recipe, an old one from my ancient Betty Crocker Cookbook. I also found Pastry Chef Michelle Bommarito's recipe at Cookie Madness on the Internet, and I am sure it is surefire, too. It will be for my next bouquet. I am using thin bamboo skewers (from world Market, Pier One or the supermarket) because they are cheaper, in the long run, than sucker sticks from the cake supply store. And they work just fine. I cut them with heavy diagonal wire cutters.For Helen's bouquet I needed some Happy Daisies, some butterflies, a birthday cake, a boxer dog, a Michigan State Sparty and a Rockford Ram. I didn't have cutters for the cake or the boxer dog so I had to improvise. I found images of cutters that would work on the Internet, then drew their outlines on a piece of card stock. I cut out the patterns, laid them on the dough then cut them out with a NEW CLEAN craft knife. Worked not too bad.

I found (again, by trial and error) that the process of inserting the skewers worked best for me if I first laid a small scrap of thin dough on the parchment paper lined pan. Then I put down the stick. Then I cut out the cookie and placed it on top of the dough and the stick and pressed it all together LIGHTLY. I found this process much less likely to break the cookies during the skewering process. When the cookie baked it all melded together.