Want a fun and exciting centerpiece for your thanksgiving dinner?  One that not only looks great but doubles as a dessert too?  Well this Autumn Splendor Centerpiece is sure to impress your guests and it doesn’t cost you an arm and leg to make it.

Autumn Splendor Centerpiece is easy to make and can be changed easily if you need or want.  All you need is a simple sugar cookie recipe with frosting, a stick wreath easily found at a craft store, fake pumpkin, candle (whatever color), and some little decorations to go around the top which can be left out if you want.

First get your fake pumpkin and cut a hole in the top large enough to fit your candle.  I just used a steak knife which seemed to work great but it did make a little bit of a mess with Styrofoam all over.  Place your candle in the whole.

Next if you want you can get little decorations to go around the ring of the pumpkin and candle or you can leave it blank.  I found some cool little beads I guess you could call them and pinned them to the pumpkin.  Just walk around a craft store and you can find some fun things like maybe leafs, jewels, feathers, anything you would like to dress up your centerpiece.

On your stick wreath (horrible name I know but I don’t really know the technical name for it), place a sheet of cellophane to help support the cookies a little better and so people don’t get any weird sticks in their cookies.  Make it a little bigger than the wreath because when you place the pumpkin on it it will come in a little bit.  Place decorated pumpkin in the center of the wreath on top of the cellophane.

Make sugar cookies and decorate them.  My sugar cookie recipe and frosting is just basic – nothing too fancy, recipes below, and I also didn’t spend hours decorating mine because the only people that saw it was my little nephews and nieces. Feel free to get creative and design however you want.  Plain leaves look great on this wreath and doesn’t take forever to decorate.  You can get as creative as you want or as simple as you want with the Autumn Splendor Centerpiece.

I cut my cookies into different leafs, acorns, squirrels, turkeys, apples, and a few flowers.  Then I just put simple frosting on them in colors of red, yellow, orange, brown.  I then froze them and an hour before we sat down pulled them out, placed them around the wreath, not too far out on the wreath so they didn’t fall off but did a few layers and placed in the center of the table.  It looked great without all the hard work and I had a great centerpiece and dessert tray.

Sugar cookie and frosting recipes

Cookies – Ingredients

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• ½ teaspoon almond extract
• 1 egg
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 3 cups flour

Cookies – Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Cream butter and sugar together until smooth. Beat in the extracts and egg.
3. Mix in baking powder and flour until combined.
4. Roll out onto a floured surface until about ¼ inch thick and cut into shapes with cookie cutters.
5. Place on greased cookie sheet and bake for 6-8 minutes. Let completely cool before frosting.

Frosting – Ingredients

• 2 cups shortening
• 1 tablespoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon almond extract
• 8 cups powdered sugar
• 1/8 cup milk
• Food coloring

Frosting – Directions

1. Cream all ingredients except powdered sugar.
2. Slowly add in powdered sugar.
3. Can add more or less milk for different consistencies if needed.
4. Separate into bowls and add food coloring.