Festive Easter Gourmet Cookies To Brighten Your Holiday Table

These holiday decorative gourmet cookies make wonderful place card holders for your holiday table and become a gourmet cookie treat for dessert. Prior to beginning the creative baking process gather the following supplies and ingredients:

• One 18-ounce roll of refrigerated sugar cookie dough
• 2/3-cup all-purpose flour
• One 16-ounce cup of prepared vanilla frosting
• Food colorings in pastel spring colors: light blue, pink, purple and yellow
• Two bags of M&M’s brand milk chocolate cookies in Easter colors.
• Six 6-inch terra cotta flowerpots
• Six foam squares
• Easter grass
• Green cellophane
• Curling ribbon
• Decorative cloth ribbon to glue around the rim of the terra cotta flowerpots
• A tulip shaped cookie cutter

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Begin kneading the cookie and flour together, until it is smooth. Roll dough onto a lightly floured work surface until it is ¼ inch thick. Cut six tulip shapes out of the sugar cookie dough with the tulip shaped cookie cutter. Place each tulip shaped cookie onto a parchment lined baking sheet. Place a craft stick under each cookie and press it into the cookie dough securely. Bake sugar cookies for about 12 to 15 minutes or until golden brown. Transfer with a spatula onto a wire cookie cooling rack. Do not use the craft sticks to move the warm cookies. As the cookies cool, divide the frosting into four different small bowls. Tint the different frostings to a soft pastel yellow, purple, blue and pink. Using a frosting spreader, frost each of the cookies. And arrange the matching color M&M’s across the frosted surface. Allow the cookies to dry for 30 minutes. While the cookie frosting is hardening, fill the flowerpots with the foam squares and cover with the Easter grass. Gently wrap each craft stick with green cellophane so that it resembles a green floral stem. Secure cellophane with curling ribbon. Glue decorator ribbon around the top of each flowerpot and tie with a decorative bow. Press the tulip cookies craft sticks into the foam square within the flowerpot, and spread pastel green M & M’s around the base of each flower.