What better recipe for a faerie food aesthetic than some floral, sweet, soft sugar cookies? I made these for the summer solstice marking the first day of summer, a symbol of the plenty more beautiful flowers to be blooming in this new season! These are a mix between a sugar cookie and soft, scone-like biscuit. If that sounds as though it's up your street then check out the recipe below!

Recipe:

• 1/3 cup margarine (I used a plant-based one)
• 1/2 cup sugar (you could use coconut sugar, date sugar, raw cane sugar etc)
• 2 tbsp raw honey (you could use maple syrup)
• 1 large egg
• 2.5 tbsp milk (dairy or plant-based it's up to you)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1.5 cups self-raising flour
• 1 pinch salt (I used pink Himalayan) 

For the Icing:

• Purple icing (either shop bought or can be made by mixing butterfly pea flowers and a dash of citrus)
• 1 tbsp hibiscus flowers
• 2-3 tbsp boiling water
• Edible flowers of choice (I used some violas)
• 2-3 tbsp icing sugar 
• A small bowl (approx 1 cup) of sugar of choice

How to:

1. Preheat the oven to 175 degrees Celsius (fan).
2. Cream the margarine and sugar together for around 3 mins.
3. Add the eggs, honey, milk and vanilla and whisk for another 3 mins.
4. In another bowl, mix the flour and salt together.
5. Slowly add the dry ingredients into the wet mixture, a few tablespoons at a time. When all of the dry ingredients are added, it should form a soft dough. Gentle knead into a ball. If it is too soft add more flour, if it is too dry add more milk.
6. Place in the fridge for around 30 mins.
7. Flour your worktop and roll the dough out and cut into your desired shape with a cookie cutter of your choice. Aim for around 1/2cm thickness. 
8. Place the cookies onto some baking paper and place in the oven for around 6-9 mins until they are light brown but still soft to touch (kind of like a cake, as they will harden a little more as they cool down).

Icing:

1. Make a hibiscus tea by adding the hibiscus flowers to the boiling water and steeping until the water turns a deep, blood red. 
2. Mix around a tsp of the deep red hibiscus water with the sugar granules to form a lovely pink sugar.
3. In another bowl make some pink icing by adding a few drops of the hibiscus tea to the icing sugar. 

Decorating:

1. Once the cookies are baked, allow to cool.
2. Once cooled, dip the rim of each cookie in the pink icing sugar and then into the pink sugar. 
3. Ice the top of the cookies with the purple icing and add your edible flower on top!

Your cookies are now all done and ready to be enjoyed. Remember that you can use any colours you like so be creative and enjoy the process!

Enjoy.