Valentines Day sugar cookies

In today’s blog, I will be sharing with you my process of making valentine sugar cookies. How to make cookies and icing to decorate cookies. You can find the full recipes from this post in my recipe section. I started making decorated sugar cookies just 4 months ago. I love making them for the artistic outlet and of course, I love baking. Decorated cookies are wonderful for any holiday or occasion I’ve made them for baby showers, Christmas, Thanksgiving, birthdays, and now these valentines cookies. There are endless decorating possibilities with sugar cookies. This sugar cookie recipe I am sharing with you is a very delicious and not overly sweet cookie that just melts in our mouth and the icing is just the right sweetness to add to your cookie. These are some of my favorites and very addicting to eat. You can find the recipe here https://bakingmamalife.com/?page_id=91

Step-by-Step Instructions

First, gather all your ingredients and utensils to your work space. Pictured is what I use in my cookie recipe.

Next, I start measuring and adding my wet ingredients together. First, your cup of butter(2 cubes) and a cup of sugar.

Then, your 2 eggs and 2teaspoons of extract(I love using 1tsp vanilla and 1tsp almond).

After mixing the wet ingredients (you don’t have to worry about over-mixing these ingredients) I add the dry ingredients, you want to put 3 1/2 cups flour and 1/2teaspoon salt in the bowl. This is where you want to make sure you don’t over mix just mix until it’s well combined.

Yay! the cookie dough is done! Now you can chill your dough at this point if you would like but I never do. chilling your dough is just to help keep the shape of the cookies but I haven’t had any issues with my cookies not staying in their shape.

Now comes one of the fun parts! Pick what cookie cutters you want! I chose these valentine’s cookie cutters.

Back to the fun stuff! Next, you want to roll your cookie dough out to about 1/8 inch thick try and roll out as even as you can if some are too thin on the edges don’t cut any cookies in that area and re-roll that dough. For anyone interested, the rolling pin I am using is a rolling pin I got for Christmas one year, and love it! you can buy it here on Amazon https://amzn.to/3LwWzg8

Now place cookies on a cookie sheet, I use a silicone baking sheet which you can find here https://amzn.to/34DuO55 if you are interested in buying one for yourself I LOVE mine.

Set your oven to 350 degrees and cook for 10-14 minutes(cooking time will depend on the size of cookies). You will want to make sure that your cookies are slightly golden brown on the edges they may not look completely cooked to you but they cook more once you take them out and will darken as they cool off. If you like your cookies crunchier, cook until golden brown on the edges. Let’s make our icing while the cookies are cooling on the cooling rack!

Making icing is pretty simple first get out your ingredients and utensils.

First, you are going to want to sift 5 cups of powdered sugar into your bowl so there are no clumps in your icing. Add in your 2-3 egg whites(start with 2 and then if you need more add a little bit at a time), 1/2tsp vanilla, and 1/2tsp almond extract. Mix all the ingredients should be kind of thick so that you can make into the consistency you need. At this point, I would taste your icing and make you have enough extract to your liking.

Separate small amounts and add your gel food coloring to the color you are wanting then add small amounts of water to your icing for the desired consistency you are wanting.

Let’s talk about icing consistency. I use 3 different consistencies of icing there is thick icing which is stiff peaks for doing flowers and raised designs that you want to pop out. The second icing is for outlining you want the consistency to be runny but not level out in the bowl for 5 seconds. The third consistency is for flooding your outlined areas of cookies, you want it to level out in just a couple of seconds.

Now that you have your different colors and consistencies put them in piping bags and you can start your decorating!

When you decorate cookies you want to outline your cookie first.

Then flood your cookies and let dry(unless you are doing a wet on wet technique).

I take a toothpick and make sure there are no bubbles or peaks and it’s all level. You can always buy a scribe if you don’t want to use a toothpick. here is a link to a scribe that I am going to buy https://amzn.to/3JsYb. Let the icing dry and then put whatever design you’re wanting on your cookies.

I hope you enjoyed my first blog on decorating valentine sugar cookies and hope you enjoy many more of my baking blogs to come!