flower sugar cookies with royal icing

I recently reconnected with my friend Vicky from high school, and with her daughter's first birthday party coming up I offered to make cookies for the favors.  Since she had planned a flower theme for the party, we decided that I would make flower cookies in her color scheme of light-aqua and yellow.

I used my favorite sugar cookie recipe, and a Wilton cookie cutter to cut out the shapes.  Then I whipped up some royal icing (recipe from the same book), and decorated half of the cookies with white icing and the other half with a light-aqua icing, with yellow centers for both.

I like to decorate my cookies by first piping an outline with stiff icing, then filling it in with runny icing of the same color.  Once that dries for a few hours, then I like to pipe another border on top, and then pipe on any extra decorations (in this case, the yellow centers and the white accents).

After letting the icing dry overnight, I placed two cookies in each cellophane favor bag, and tied them with raffia and custom tags that I had printed out on card stock (similar to the baby shower cookies that I made back in January).

The party was held at a park, and everything was beautiful!  It was a perfect warm sunny day, and Vicky had decorated the trees with adorable aqua and yellow tissue pom-poms.  She had yellow flower plates and napkins on aqua tablecloths, and even a station where kids could decorate little terra cotta pots and plant yellow flowers.

We had a great time, even though we had to leave early and missed the cake cutting!  Thanks for inviting us Vicky!  Hope everyone enjoyed the cookies!