Have you ever seen a recipe you just had to try? I'm a sucker for wonderful desserts. In my most recent issue of Southern Living, butterfly sugar cookies were featured.

They were so beautiful! Lavender colored icing, about five different shapes. I just had to try them.

I had never seen such a beautiful shade of lavender or violet in either food coloring or sugar sprinkles. I gave my cookie cutters to my oldest daughter years ago. Still, this project didn't seem like that much of a challenge.

I made a special trip to my Whole Foods. They didn't have either the food coloring paste or the merinque powder which was guaranteed to produce a good looking icing of the beautiful shade shown in the photo.

I checked out the local cooking shop - they had an assortment of cookie cutters, but not an assortment of butterfly cookie cutters.

Oh, well, in the age of the Internet, shopping brick walls are easily scaled. I immediately began to search for the food coloring paste - but no luck. The same thing happened with the merinque powder.

Next I tried for the butterfly cutters. I went to the sites recommended in the article, but they just had some of the cutters. Note: some of the cutters used in the feature were collectibles.

This had now become a crusade. I brooded over where to find the necessary ingredients. Then as I was reading my email, a message came in from King Arthur flour. Even though I am an avid baker, I hadn't thought of checking their site.

Bingo! Food color paste and merinque powder!

Next I went to eBay and found an assortment of butterfly cutters.

The rest of the ingredients were easily available and my friends are going to love these cookies!

Let's see now - what did they cost? The recipe makes three dozen cookies.

coarse sugars - set of 5 - $19.95

food color gel - $12.95

five different butterfly cookie cutters 12.95

meringue powder $10.95

other ingredients $2.00 or so

newstand issue of magazine  $4.99

shipping for Internet orders - $20

Just about a $2.50 a cookie. Yep, a bit of a luxury item. Worth it? From a creative point of view? Of course! From a culinary point of view - definitely!  We won't talk about budgetary considerations.