Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Valentine's Day Heart Sugar Cookies


Recently, I had the pleasure of spending a Saturday night bonding with my friend ,Vanessa, over a few glasses of wine and while decorating these Valentine's day cookies.  Vanessa is a fantastic cook and baker (amongst other things) and we had both talked about how we should get together one night to share baking and decorating tips.  After a few attempts to coordinate a date, we were finally able to get together.  It was so great to catch-up with her and I was so happy with how these cookies turned out!


 My friend, Vanessa's gorgeous chocolate heart cookies.  Simply beautiful!!


The classic sugar cookie recipe and royal icing recipe is listed below.  To make the heart design on the  cookies, start by piping a border of royal icing on your cookie and flood the center with same or coordinating color.  Then immediately (if you wait too long it won't work as well) add dots to the border area of the cookie.  Finally, drag a clean toothpick through the dots and you'll make this lovely connecting hearts design.


Sugar Cookies

Ingredients:

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 1/2 teaspoon good quality vanilla extract

Parchment paper or Silpat mat

Directions:

-In a medium bowl, stir together the flour and baking powder and set aside.
-In the bowl of an electric mixer, using the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. This should take about 3 minutes.
-Add the egg and vanilla and beat another minute or so.
-Add the flour mixture slowly. (Be careful not to add too much at a time or you will have a snowstorm of flour.)
-Blend until all of the flour is incorporated and the dough begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl.
-Take the dough out of the bowl and place it on a piece of parchment paper. 
-Using your hands, knead the dough a few times.
-Place the dough in a large plastic (Ziploc type) bag and refrigerate for about 2 hours. If you want to speed up the chilling process, place the bag of dough in the freezer for about 20-30 minutes. Just don't forget it in the freezer, or it will become to firm to work with (and then you'll have to wait for it to thaw). 
-When it's almost time to remove the dough from the refrigerator (or freezer), preheat oven to 350 degrees (F).
-When the dough has chilled and is firm, take out about half of the dough, leaving the rest in the refrigerator (until your ready to work with it).

Royal Icing

Ingredients: 
4 Tablespoons Meringue Powder (I use Wilton Brand)
4 cups (about 1 pound) powdered sugar
6 Tablespoons warm water
1 teaspoon clear vanilla extract


Directions:
Beat all ingredients until stiff peaks form. 
*Make sure all bowls and utensils are totally grease-free or your icing will never reach proper consistency.
Spoon some of the thick white icing into individual bowls and add coloring.  Then divide each colored batch in half.  Carefully, add and stir warm water to the icing to get a think and a thin "flooding" consistency.  Decorate your cookies.  Cookies will need 12-24 hours to dry completely.

Source: Glorious Treats


3 comments:

  1. Julie Hammonds (teatimewithjulie@hotmail.com)Monday, March 18, 2013 at 3:44:00 PM EDT

    I am confused! I want to make the chocolate version of the sugar cookies shown about. I do not see any thing about making them, though. The recipe shown is for regular vanilla sugar cookies with no shown substition for cocoa or anything. Help????

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sorry Julie. Those were made by my friend Vanessa. I don't have that recipe.

      Delete
  2. Oh wow, these are absolutely beautiful! Fantastic work you've done on these!

    ReplyDelete