Rose Valentine Cookies

Each time I decorate cookies, my skills improve and  I get faster and more consistent.

Yes, it's no secret that good old fashioned practice is the way to upgrade your cookie decorating and these wet on wet rose Valentine cookies prove that point. The technique isn't hard, you just pipe a blob of wet icing onto wet icing and swirl it around with a toothpick or scribe tool. But, it does take some experience and finessing to make a rose that looks sort of realistic.

What I really love is that after lots of practice, I'm not only better at making wet on wet roses but I'm faster, which is why I even considered adding them to cookies for my upcoming fundraising sale.

Here's a sneak peak:

These mini rose cookies will be for sale in sets of two.

The mini rose cookies also look cute when stuck on top of a larger base cookie.

I used ivory, pink and a bit of moss green icing for these.

Here's a closeup of some mini roses. I used the same icing for the leaves to add groups of tiny dots.

Easy Valentine Cookie

This two colored Valentine cookie is pretty and very easy to make.

Besides two colors of royal icing, you also need two cookie cutters to make them — a large cutter of your choice for the base cookie (I used a plaque-shaped one) and a smaller heart cutter.

I chose to fill the heart with a fuschia colored icing but pink or red would also look great.

This design once again proves to me that it's often the simplest ones that look the best. And, getting a perfect shaped heart in the center of the cookie was no problem because I made a guide to follow by using the heart cookie cutter to make an indentation before baking.

Use a heart cutter to make an indentation in the cookie before baking.

This outline will stay after baking.

Outline the cookie and heart shape and flood with white royal icing.

Immediately fill in the heart with the color of your choice. I chose fuschia. Let the cookie dry completely before packaging.

Hey, now that I think of it, this using a cookie cutter to make an indentation technique has a lot of decorating possibilities.

I happen to have a small bee cutter and wouldn't a "Bee Mine" Valentine cookie be sweet?

Stay tuned.....

Hug And Kiss Cookies

You don't need any fancy cookie cutters to make these cute Hug and Kiss cookies for Valentine's Day.

Any small cookie cutter will do. I used a scalloped 1-inch rectangle cutter but a square or round cutter would just as well. 

I used three colors of royal icing to make them:

Medium pink for the base coat.
Red for the "X's" and "O's".
And, hot pink for the dot border.

The medium pink and red icings were flood consistency and the hot pink icing was piping consistency.  Because the cookies are small, I recommend using a #1 pastry tip for all of the icings. The small sized tip gives you better control for decorating a small cookie.

I didn't let the base coat dry before piping the "X's" and "O's" because I wanted the red icing to settle into the pink and be flat on the cookie.

Experiment with other color combinations. The brighter the better!