Instructions: Cream together oil, sugars and butter. Add the eggs to the creamed mixture.

Sift together the salt, cream of tartar, baking soda & flour. Add flour mixture gradually to creamed mixture and mix well. Then add 1 teaspoon vanilla extract.

Chill dough for 1 1/2 hrs.

On lightly floured surface roll out dough to approx. 1/8" thickness.

Cut out with sunflower-shaped cutter. Place onto cookie sheet. Make a circle shaped indentation into center of cookie using a small glass or any round object.

Sprinkle circular area in center of cookie with a mixture of finely ground pecans, cinnamon, and granulated sugar. Place a piece of a slivered almond in each petal of cookie. Sprinkle entire cookie lightly with superfine sugar. To make cookies on a stem, cut a 3/8" wooden dowel various lengths and press one end of a dowel into cookie about 1" from edge of sunflower.

Reinforce by pressing a thin piece of dough on top of dowel. Bake cookies at 375 degrees for approximately 8-10 minutes until lightly browned. Remove from pan carefully and cool on wire racks. When the cookies have completely cooled, wrap floral tape and artificial leaves around the wooden dowels for the cookies baked on dowels to complete the sunflower cookie. Arrange in flowerpot or container of choice. Enjoy!

California Heartland is all about food and fun. And so is the California State Fair! So what happens when you combine the two? You get an event that left my mouth watering.

The annual Land O" Lakes sponsored "California Living Butter Cookie Contest." Entrants from all over the Golden State combined California ingredients to bake cookies worthy of blue ribbons and prize money.

At the State Fair, the kitchen competitions are very serious business. But they"re also a lot of fun. After all, we did get to taste a lot of great cookies. And taste and taste and taste.

From sugar cookies to apricot gold bars to tropical bitter sweets, we tasted them all. Narrowing down the field of entries to 10 finalists was a tough task.

Patience was a virtue in this competition. Entries were judged on their taste, originality, ease of preparation and appearance. While we were busy tasting, the audience was anxiously waiting for the verdict. The eventual winner seemed as if she must know Martha Stewart personally. Sandy Salmon took home the blue ribbon for her "Bloomin" Butter Cookies."

Courtesy of Sandy Salmon, the California State Fair and the Land O" Lakes California Living Butter Cookie Contest.

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