A few weeks ago my daughter texted me a picture of an absolutely beautiful birthday cake adorned with gorgeous spring flowers and colorful fresh fruit and told me that was the cake she wanted for her next birthday. It was amazing – a true work of art!
“Yeah right,” I thought to myself. “Me, make that cake? That is never going to happen.”
I mean, I consider myself a fairly decent baker. It’s something I’ve always loved to do and I’m typically not afraid to venture into new territory and try difficult recipes, but this recipe looked way too far out of my league.
But then, doing what I always seem to do best, which is ponder challenges and then throw caution to the wind and give them a whirl, I decided to give the idea a shot. After doing a fair amount of research, I found that it wasn’t really all that difficult after all. Once you know which flowers are safe to work with (i.e. which ones are free of pesticides, which typically mean organically grown flowers) and which fresh fruits you fancy, the rest is actually easy!
Rather than try my hand at the cake, I 
decided to test the waters with sugar cookies. Although I personally didn’t eat the flowers (they were simply used as a garnish), there are actually plenty of flowers that are not only beautiful but edible that could easily be added to any cookie or cake. Flowers such as roses, gardenias, daisies, pansies, and violets, for instance, are all considered safe to consume.
What I love most about this simple idea is that it can be used when making cookies, cakes or cupcakes. Plus, just think about all the festive occasions where you could have so much fun with this idea by customizing the fruit, flowers, and decorations to match your event – sweet 16 birthday parties, graduation, Easter, Christmas, Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day, not to mention showers and weddings, of course.
Regardless of where you are in your decorating ability, these are so incredibly simple and beautiful they’re sure to be a huge hit at any festive event or gathering!
Caution should be used when choosing flowers as not all flowers are appropriate for decoration. Some flowers are naturally toxic; others are simply unsafe because of pesticide use. For tips on decorating with flowers visit: When Flowers Meet Flour in Cake Decorating
Ingredients
- 2 1/2 cups of flour
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 cup butter
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 egg
- 2 tablespoons milk
- Fresh flowers such as small roses, daisies, pansies, violets, etc.
- Fruit (washed and completely dry) such as: Kiwi, strawberries, grapes, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, mandarin oranges or "cuties" oranges, etc.
- Icing: Make your own or purchase pre-made. I used 2 - 16oz containers of Pillsbury White Frosting
- Note: If you're pressed for time you can purchase a package or two of the Pillsbury 16.5 oz refrigerated sugar cookies.
Instructions
NOTE: I opted to make much larger cookies to offer me more room to add my decorations. You can make the cookies as small or large as you wish, however, the bigger the cookie, the more decorating space you'll have to add your frosting, fruit, and flowers.
Decorating:
- Wash and slice desired fruits of choice
- Frost cookies (when frosting my cookies I used the Pampered Chef Easy Accent Decorator)
- Add your choice of flowers and fruit to the cookies
Feel free to get creative here! You can add whole strawberries or sliced, small slices of kiwi (to look like leaves) or larger slices. Clusters of blueberries, blackberries or raspberries are also pretty!
Sugar cookie recipe adapted from allgirl.com