Lavender and Rose Sandwich Cookies

Sometimes you just have to make yourself some pretty cookies.  With Mother's Day coming up I whipped up some quick and easy rose and lavender sandwich cookies - just for me!

I work outside of the house full time and have 3 kiddos (a 12 almost 13 year old and 10 year old twins) so as with most moms - I rarely get to do stuff just for me.  As I get older, I'm finding that I need to make more time for that- to take more time to smell the roses - OR lavender!

Both are 2 of my favs so I decided to make some pretty sandwich cookies.

I had a little leftover sugar cookie dough so baked up a bunch of small round cookies.

Also had some leftover buttercream so flavored 1/2 with rose water and 1/2 with dried lavender.

Tint them with food gels to get rose and lavender colors (if you don't like dyes you can skip that step of course - or you can try natural colors like a little beet powder)

Add a dollop of flavored buttercream and top with another cookie!

See - pretty little sandwich cookies (which make me so happy!)

They would work great for Mother's Day or a baby shower too.  The hubby and I are getting away next weekend - we had this planned from awhile ago and I realized this week that I will be away from the kids on Mother's Day this year (insert sad crying emoji!).  You have to have some grown up alone time too right? But I'm trying not to feel too guilty for not seeing the kiddos this Sunday. Eating a bunch of these sandwich cookies may help me out of that feeling!

Sandwich Cookies with Lavender and Rose buttercream filling

by Michelle Clausen May 7 - 2017

Ingredients

• 1/2  roll of refrigerated sugar cookie dough (or use your favorite home made recipe)
• 2 cups of buttercream icing
• 1 teaspoon of rose water (add a little at a time until you get the rose flavor you like - it can get intense if you add too much)
• 1 teaspoon of powdered dried lavender (add a little at a time until you get the rose flavor you like - it can get intense if you add too much)
• rose and lavender colored food gel

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Roll dough into half in balls and place on baking sheet.
3. Bake for 7 minutes or until edges of cookies are just golden.  Let cool.
4. Separate buttercream into 2 bowls.  
5. Add rose water and rose colored gel to one and mix well.
6. Add lavender and lavender colored gel to the other and mix well.
7. Add dollop of buttercream to one cookie then place another on top.  Press until buttercream just comes to edges of cookies. 
8. Garnish with dried lavender or edible rose petals 

Prep time: 35 minutes Yield: about 20 sandwich cookies

Hydrangea Sugar Cookie Cake

Since this Mother's Day we'll be flying back from Orlando, I figured I'd make myself a pretty treat ahead of time.  It's a perfect little treat for Mother's Day or any day actually.  

A sugar cookie cake with homemade vanilla buttercream - the buttercream is tinted shades of blue, purple, and white then piped like hydrangea flowers.  Glory from Glorious Treats made hydrangea cupcakes way back in 2010 - and I tried them back then here.  The same technique is used for this cookie cake by using a large closed star tip (like Wilton 2D) to pipe on the flowers.  You really can't mess it up.  

Mix the colors into one piping bag.  Then pipe away.  

Hydrangeas are one of my all time favorite flavors but I can grow them 1) because I have the worst green thumb and 2) we have deer that think they taste like cupcakes ;)

So this decorated cookie cake was the perfect way to get my hydrangea fix in.  Plus it's very simple but so dang pretty!  Sprinkle on some pearl sugar balls and you're done.

Well except for eating a slice or 2 (or more if it's for Mother's Day!)

Have a great week! And thanks for swinging by!!

PS if you snapchat, I'm trying to figure that out and sharing some fun stuff over there too like my most recent baking fail #chouxpastryisnotmyfriend

@sugarswings

print recipe

Hydrangea Cookie Cake

by Michelle Clausen April-17-2016

Ingredients

• 1 package   refrigerated cookie dough
• 1 batch   buttercream or canned frosting

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  
Spray 9 inch cake pan with non-stick spray.
2. Spread sugar cookie dough 1/4 - 1/2 inch across pan.3. Bake for 30 minutes or until just browned on top.
4. Divide frosting or buttercream into 3 bowls and tint one bowl light blue, 1 bowl purple, and leave one un-tinted. Add some of each color to a piping bag fitted with closed star tip.
5. Once cookie is cooled, pipe flowers onto cake.  Add pearl sugar ball sprinkles randomly on top.  Serve!

Details

Prep time: 30 mins Cook time: 30 mins Total time: 1 hour Yield: 8-10 slices

mother's day, graduation, and 80's neon party.....!

...so i hope everyone had an awesome mother's day weekend! or just had a fun weekend in general...to celebrate mother's day AND to celebrate that i officially finished my higher pharmacy degree (pharmD)....i made myself a fun little party.....and channeled some of my inner 80's just for fun....!

...if you're an 80's child...you'll remember these...

florescent jelly bracelets...or actually a lot of neon and florescent stuff in general....belts, sweatshirts, shoes....you name it....so tried to get some of that color for this par-tay....

....tint your frosting until you get the color you like....i used food paste pink, yellow and light green from william sonoma (the orange i made from the same yellow and added a little red to get the color i wanted)

the cupcakes and cake are a chocolate cake from i am baker which is from this recipe.....2 words.....MAKE IT!!....so simple and delicious!....decorated the cupcakes with the tinted frosting with some different wilton tips....

I always like to know which tip did what design (tip 199 is my fav right now!)

the diplomas (did you realize they were diplomas?) where made with tootsie rolls...my newest favorite medium since i am not a fondant fan....just nuke a tootsie roll in the microwave for no more than 10 seconds.....roll out flat, then roll it up like a diploma, snip ends if needed until you get the diploma shape...i tied it with some leftover edible grass from easter....i originally did them in the vanilla flavor, but then realized i had matching colors of the frosting with lime, cherry, orange, and lemon tootsie rolls!

had some leftover frosting so made some sandwich cookies with some store bought chocolate wafer cookies....

i like the chocolate with bright neon colors together....definitely had an 80's look to them for me....since there was a lot of florescent with black combos back then!

and the cake for mother's day...it was a 6-inch chocolate layer cake...frosted with homemade buttercream with just simple drop flowers on top in the bright colors....

flowers made with wilton tip #108

...and added some sugar pearls and some bright pink non-pareils around...and done!

....and you get some fun neon goodies!....i never thought i'd look back to the 80's and say "why yes, more neon please...." but i actually kinda miss it....and neon is making a come back....i bought a neon pink belt the other day from the gap!...now if mullets and acid washed jeans come back into style i may have to take a pass (and how would you make acid washed cupcakes??!)....but some florescent accessories and goodies i can deal with!

 

the kids and i had a really nice mother's day....i got to sleep in late, got some homemade gifts, and had a fancy lunch with them .....a lunch without chicken nuggets or mac and cheese on the menu!....the rest of the day i just enjoyed them and being their mom....absolutely nothing better....

p.s. playing around with pic monkey (my nostalgic 80's pic above).....love that site....it's ridiculously easy to use too!

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mother's day goodies....!

well re-posting after the blogger snafu....!

...does everyone make their own mother's day treats or maybe that's just me....?

....these are a mashup of i am baker's rose cake (which is showing up everywhere these days) and the infamous bakerella's mother's day cupcakes.....btw-although bakerella is pretty much synonymous with cake pops, her other creations are awesomely awesome as well....like this re-creation of her niece's artwork in cake!...i am so doing this one of these days!...i think i can easily blame her for my candy melt obsession too...!

...and while i'm at it...that amanda....she does some really cool cakes with surprises inside like this easter egg cake.....and i totally thought her russian doll cake was going to have layers of russian nesting dolls inside (she probably can do that but doesn't want everyone else to give up and stop baking)...

...the sugar cookie cake is made from the same base as these frosted sugar cookie bars....(definitely use the lemon zest, it makes the recipe)

...and i finally got around to using the letter mold i got awhile ago.....i used candy melts and before totally hardened....added a tooth pick at the bottom of the letter (so you can stick it into the cake)....

....and since i had some leftover cupcake batter from these....i made some mini bundt cakes too.....well because who doesn't love mini bundt cakes...?

.....i used much smaller roses than amanda's rose cake....using a wilton #17 tip but you can probably use any open star tip.....and make sure the frosting is at room temp and not cold...it's much easier to pipe the flowers that way.....

.....and after a couple it gets pretty easy to get the hang of it.....

....you end up with a bunch of cute bundt cakes and a big sugar cookie cake....!

....oh and i found out that my kiddos that usually only eat the frosting off a cupcake (go figure!) will eat slices of the the frosted sugar cookie cake....

....hope everyone had a great mother's day....and lookie at one of the mother's day card's i got.....

....it doesn't get much better than that!

ps i am so bummed i lost the comments on this post, they were so sweet! (not that i'm looking for comments or anything.... :) thanks for stopping by and have a great week!

tidy mom

Happy Mother's Day to me...! (and the other moms of course!)

Decided to make up a batch for us since 1) finished my cardiovascular final last nite (yay) 2) the yankees kicked the crap out of the sox (even after a rain delay) 3) it's mother's day tomorrow and I have great kids. Life is good.

Tried a new icing and although it was tasty, it's not my fav, you can see the butter seems to be melting out (not too bad for these "sprinklesque" cupcakes as it kinda looks like gold flecks in the icing but it's too soft for piping really). I may have not waited long enough for the parts to cool before mixing. Oh well, live and learn.

Some of the kids presents...shanna helped the little's make the cards on the bottom....very cute, and jack's gift made at school (pretend the marigold is not on its way out!). Happy Mother's Day to all the kick arse mom's out there.