• Remove all of the butter from the refrigerator. You will make the sugar cookies first but the butter for the frosting needs to come to room temperature before mixing.

Sugar Cookies

• Preheat the oven to 350℉ and prepare an aluminum cookie sheet by placing either parchment paper or a silicone baking mat on it.
• In a medium sized mixing bowl, combine the flour and baking powder and mix together. Set this aside.
• Cube a cup of salted butter and then, in a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, combine the cubed butter with the granulated sugar. Mix until creamed together well.
• To the stand mixer, add in the egg and vanilla extract and mix until combined.
• Slowly add in the dry ingredients in the mixing bowl to the stand mixer.
• Roll the dough out to 3/8" thick and use the cookie cutters to cut out the cookies. Place the cookies onto the prepared baking sheet and bake for 9-11 minutes or until the tops of the cookies no longer look wet. When baking the cookies, only bake 6-8 cookies at a time to leave proper space between each cookie to cook without spreading. Overcrowding the cookie sheet will cause spread.

Buttercream Frosting

• In a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, add the room temperature salted and unsalted butter and mix on high until light and fluffy.
• Mix in the powdered sugar little by little. Add in the vanilla extract and milk about halfway through adding the sugar to help the frosting come together. Start with one tablespoon of milk and work up to three if needed, depending on the consistency you want. I like to aim for a peanut butter consistency or thinner.
• Pull out a half cup of buttercream and dye it brown. Pull out a cup of buttercream and dye that black. Color the remaining buttercream yellow.
• Place the tip #352 into an icing bag and fill it with the yellow buttercream. Place couplers into the other two icing bags and fill one with the brown buttercream and one with the black. You don't need to add the piping tips yet.

Decorating the Buttercream Sunflower Cookies

• Attach the tip #4 to the black frosting and draw a circle in the middle of the circle cookie. You want this to be fairly big, as sunflowers have a big seed area. Then, fill in the circle a bit. Do this step for all of the cookies.
• Use the yellow bag of frosting with the 352 tip attached to pipe two rows of petals going around the circle. Repeat this step for all of the cookies.
• Remove/rinse/dry the tip #4 from the black bag of icing and place it onto the brown bag. Pipe two rows of dots for the seeds on the inside of the circles, closest to the petals. Repeat this step for all of the cookies.
• Remove/rinse/dry the tip #4 from the brown bag of icing and place it onto the black bag. Pipe dots for the seeds in the remaining area of the circle for all of the buttercream sunflower cookies.