Preheat oven to 170°Celsius. Line baking trays with parchment paper and set aside.
Add butter and sugar into a large bowl. Cream both on medium speed with an electric mixer until the mixture turns light and creamy. Do not over mix.
Add egg. Continue beating until all the traces of the egg are no longer visible. Next, add vanilla extract. Mix well.
Mix flour into the creamed ingredients on low speed until the dough turns crumbly. Transfer the dough onto a clean workspace and press it together into a ball.
Place the dough in a covered bowl (or wrap it in plastic wrap) and refrigerate until it is firm (but not too hard) for approximately 15 to 20 minutes (see Note 1).
Remove from fridge and place it between parchment paper or plastic sheets (see Note 2). Use dowel rods on either side of the dough as a guide for the thickness of your cookies. Roll the dough.
Use a medium sized snowflake cookie cutter (6 inches in diameter) to cut the rolled dough and place the cut outs on the prepared tray. Refrigerate until they are firm (for at least 30 minutes).
Bake the cookies for 12 minutes until they turn golden brown on the sides. Remove cookies from the oven and cool them on a wire rack to room temperature. Keep cookies in an airtight container until ready to decorate (see note 3).
To decorate the snowflake cookies, divide white fondant into 2. Tint the first part with Americolor Silver Spruce or blue gel food coloring. Leave the second part white (see note 4).
Dust your workspace with powdered sugar or cornstarch and roll the blue fondant thin (about 1/10 inch thick).
Next, dust the embossing mat generously with cornstarch or powdered sugar, with the raised pattern on the mat facing down (see note 5).
Turn the mat over onto the rolled fondant and gently but firmly press the pattern on the mat onto it with your fingers or the end of a small rolling pin.
Lift the mat up and using the same cookie-cutter used to cut the snowflake cookie dough, cut out the rolled fondant into a snowflake shape, making sure the embossed pattern is well centered within the cookie cutter.
Brush the snowflake cookies very lightly with fondant glue and carefully attach the fondant snowflake. Start with the pointy ends on one side of the cookie before moving slowly to the center and other parts of the snowflake. Adjust the ends of the snowflake so that they are all well aligned with the cookie underneath.
Brush off excess dusting sugar or cornstarch gently with a large soft brush.
Mix the edible gold dust with a few drops of lemon extract into gold paste (start with a little extract at a time so that the paint does not become too diluted).
Use a fine-tipped brush (food grade) to paint the embossed snowflake pattern on the fondant.
Attach a large sugar dragee at the center of each cookie and smaller ones on the sides with a light brush of fondant glue to make sure they stick securely to the fondant.
Repeat the process for all the snowflake cookies, including the white ones.
Store cookies in an airtight container.