By Linda L.

With Valentine’s Day coming up, perhaps you’ve begun to notice an abundance of intricately designed cookies available at bakeries and craft stores. Valentine’s Day is a holiday that revolves around yummy foods (hooray for those!), and cookies are an easily theme-able dessert that can be just as fun to make as to eat.

If you want to try your hand at home decorating, a good sturdy cookie and Royal Icing will be your best friends in this endeavor. Below are some recipes to get you going, as well as some basic instructions. 

For design inspiration, look online, through some current magazines, and in cookie books and go for it!  No matter how they turn out, your effort will be appreciated because it’s an effort of love—and that’s what the holiday is all about!

Short dough cookie recipe

1 Whole Egg

½ lb. Sugar

1 lb. Butter

1 ½ lb. Cake Flour, sifted

Cream sugar and butter paddle 3-5 minutes. Mix in egg one at a time, add flour and mix on low just until combined.  Refrigerate dough 2-3 hours before rolling and during rolling if it gets too soft/sticky.  Roll to ¼ inch.

Chocolate Short Dough cookie recipe

1 Whole Egg

½ lb. Sugar

1 lb. Butter

1 lb. 2 oz. Flour

6 oz. Cocoa

Sift together flour and cocoa.  Mix as above, add cocoa with flour.  Roll and cut the dough with cutters of your choice.  Bake 350 degrees for about 8 minutes or until they are golden around the edges and on the bottoms.  Cool completely.

Royal Icing

Ready to mix version available at craft or supermarkets.  There are 3 consistencies used for decorating.  Stiff peak for piping flowers, Soft peak for lines and edges and Runny for filling the center of the cookie.  Getting this right is the key.  So, spend a little time on this and you will be rewarded with a fun time and excellent outcome. Mainly we use the soft peak and runny consistencies to make those beautiful cookies we all covet. 

Put your icing in separate piping bags according to color and consistency.  Disposable bags are available at craft stores or you can make bags with squares of parchment paper.

Use the soft peak icing in your color choice to outline the cookie.  If you do not want to see the outline pipe the runny icing into the center of the cookie quickly.  If you want to see the outline or you want it to be of a different color, pipe the edges of the cookie and let the icing set up for a few minutes before filling in the centers. 

If you would like to add dots or other designs to the cookies and have them be smooth add them while the runny icing is still very wet. 

If you would like to add glitter or sugar to the edges, dip the cookies in the glitter while the edging is still wet and let dry before filling in the centers. 

If you want to pipe designs onto the cookies and have them be raised, fill the cookies with the runny icing and allow the cookies to dry completely before piping onto the centers.

Filling the centers with the runny icing takes a little skill but with practice you will get the icing over the cookie smoothly.  Allow the cookies to dry, usually overnight.

Have Fun!!

Photo credit: Chollingsworth3