Edelweiss Flower Cookies

This year our theme for our annual Ladies' Tea at our church was "The Sound of Music." Back in January I started discussing ideas for edelweiss cookies and took a look at what a real edelweiss flower looked like, checked out cookie ideas from Cake Central, and tested out the No Fail Sugar Cookie recipe. This week was the week to create my interpretation of the edelweiss flower in a cookie.

I made the dough and the fondant earlier this week, using the No Fail Sugar Cookie recipe and Marshmallow Fondant from Cake Central. I also tinted royal frosting yellow to use for center buds. On Thursday I practiced the best way to bake and frost, working in small batches made it the process go pretty well. By Saturday morning I had made over a 100 cookies.

Here is how they turned out.
First I cut out the dough with a large petal cookie cutter and while those baked I prepared the fondant for the top. After rolling out the fondant, I used my imprint pin to imprint the tulips on it. I used a different cookie cutter for the fondant and cut out as many as I needed and set those aside. I thinned down a little piping gel and had it ready to put on the cookies when they come out the oven.
After removing the cookies from the oven, I let them only sit for a second or two. (I baked them on parchment paper, great idea and I didn't have to clean my pans, and you can reuse the paper until you are finished baking.) I brushed a light coat of the gel on then very carefully matched up the petals as best I could. Having the large size cookie and smaller fondant worked well since I didn't have to match up exactly, but I did have to position them carefully. I didn't want them to look perfect, because the real edelweiss flower isn't at all perfectly shaped or even.

Besides making cookies, Lauren did the majority of little chocolate notes and treble clefs for the plate. I didn't even get a picture of that. I also hosted one of the tables at the tea, which meant providing everything expect the tablecloth, serving plates, napkins, and centerpiece. The room was too look like a big green meadow. In one are was a giant display of the Swiss Alps and in another a puppet theater similar to the one in the Julie Andrew's movie. Here are two pictures of my table, it shows both sides of the table. For favors I molded pink candy melts in one of my brown bag cookie molds. It represented my favorite things, pink and roses...and one of my favorite collections, my cookie molds. We also include a small bag with a rose candle.

It was a very nice tea and all the ladies enjoyed learning about each others favorite things and enjoying a lovely lunch. Everyone loved the cookies and I was pleased with both the taste and the design.