Pansies have a wintergreen flavor, so buy the extract at the ny bake store to boost the cookie

FOR 12 COOKIES

1¼ cups flour
¼ cup sugar
½ cup room temperature butter
¼ tsp vanilla
1 TBS dried egg whites
water

1 ¼ cups flour 1 TBS dried egg whites

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

2. Pick flowers, rinse and pat dry. Put on paper towel to finish air drying.

3. Put flour and sugar in a large bowl. Mix together. Using a pastry cutter, cut in butter and vanilla until mixture resembles fine crumbs and starts to cling together. Gather up crumbs into a ball and kneed together until smooth.

4. Roll out dough just scant of 1/4” thick. Cut with cookie cutter. I used a fluted 2-1/2” cookie cutter. Put cookies 2” apart on parchment lined baking sheet and bake for 30 minutes, until the bottom and sides are just starting to slightly brown. Watch carefully. Mine was browning at 20 minutes.

5. Take out of oven and cool on baking sheet. Combine dried egg whites and water in small bowl. When cookies are cooled brush egg with mixture on on cookie at a time and top with pansy. Use your fingers to press the pansy down in the middle and smooth out all petals so they are firmly stuck to the cookie. Put a thin layer of egg white mixture on top of the pansy and smooth. Sprinkle with sugar. Return to parchment lined baking sheet.

6. Bake at 325 degrees for 5 minutes. Remove from oven. With your finger smooth out any petals that have shrivelled up. Set on a cooling rack until the top of the cookie is completely dry.