For Valentines’ Day, Education Program Coordinator Allison Jones from the SC Botanical Garden visited the "Making It Grow" kitchen to show us how to make special Valentine treats along with some young helpers. The first one involved decorating sugar cookies with edible flower petals called “Botanical Valentine Cookies”. The second one was chocolate covered pretzels with icing called “Sweet and Salty Forsythia Branches”.
Ingredients
- Prepared batch of sugar cookies cut into heart shapes
- Royal icing
- Piping bag and plastic decorating tips or plastic bags for use for piping
- Spoon
- Toothpicks
- Assortment of dried edible flowers for decorating the cookies (different color gomphrena, rose petals, lavender buds)
- Pretzel rods "6" to "8" long
- Chocolate chips
- Candy chips to make flowers and leaves
Directions
- Make and bake heart shaped sugar cookies. Use either your favorite sugar cookie recipe or this one recommended by Making It Grow
- Melt candy chips and make yellow flowers and green leaves for the forsythia branches. (Note: you can find candy chips and molds in the baking and candy making section of Michael's or baking supply centers.)
- Prepare royal frosting. You can use commercially available merengue powder and follow the directions on the packet to create the icing or follow this recipe.
- Ready the piping bag and decorating tip, or if you don’t have those, put an open plastic bag in a glass to steady it and hold it open and spoon some of the royal icing inside. Snip the tip off of the corner of the plastic bag and pipe a line around the edge of the sugar cookie. After making an outline on the cookie, take a spoon and put some icing in the center of the cookie and gently smooth it with a toothpick until it meets the outline of the cookie. The piping helps hold the center frosting in place.
- Before the frosting hardens, lightly sprinkle dried edible flowers and petals over the top. Use a light hand as a little goes a long way.
- For the forsythia branches, have ready candy flowers and leaves to attach to the melted chocolate on the pretzel. The candy chips can be bought commercially in a variety of colors. You will want yellow and green for this project. Let the candies cool after they have been formed.
- Melt the chocolate chips and paint the pretzel rod by spooning some of the melted chocolate on the "branch" leaving a few inches of the pretzel uncovered so that you have something to hold onto while making your forsythia branch. Paint only one side, where you want the flowers and leaves to stick to the pretzel stick stem.
- Press candy flowers and leaves along the sides of the coated pretzel branch and set aside on a flat tray to firm up.
🌱 Making It Grow is an award-winning program produced by SCETV and Clemson University. Host Amanda McNulty from Clemson Extension along with Clemson Extension Master Gardener State Coordinator Agent Terasa Lott plus other Extension Agents and featured guests offer research-based information on a variety of gardening, agricultural, and environmental topics, while also highlighting interesting places and products from around South Carolina.
🍽️ For more recipes like the one above, visit SCETV Food.
