Textured Heart Cookie

A simple cookie design can be made more interesting with a bit of texture. Creating the textured background for the heart isn't hard at all, it just takes some stiff royal icing, a small square tip brush and some time.


Here's how:

Bake a batch of sugar cookies. I cut out squares and rounds of cookie dough and then with a smaller heart cutter made an impression in each of the cookies. The impression will stay during baking.

Pipe some thinned royal icing around the heart.

Use a knife to spread it to the edges of the cookie. Be sure it's just a thin coat of icing since you'll be adding plenty more in the next step. Let this dry completely before moving on.

Get your square tip brush, a small cup of water and a paper towel ready and starting at the top edge of the cookie pipe a row of dots using stiff royal icing. In one stroke and pulling downward, swipe each dot with the brush. Be sure to clean the brush periodically, dabbing off excess water with paper towel. Add another row of royal icing dots and repeat.

Keep working down the cookie and around the heart impression.

Try your best to keep your rows even and straight.

When you are done, let the icing dry before moving onto the next step.

Outline the heart with flood consistency royal icing.

Fill in the heart with more of the flood icing and give the cookie a gentle shake to help it settle into place. Let the cookies dry completely before serving or packaging.

"Bee" Mine Valentine Cookie

Believe me, no artistic ability is needed to create this cute "Bee" Mine Valentine cookie.

The bee was created by pressing a cookie cutter into the cookie before baking. Then, all you need to do is trace the outline and amaze your loved ones with a beautiful sweet treat.

Here's how:

Cut out your cookie (I used a plaque-shaped cutter) and gently press your bee cutter into the dough to make an indentation.

It will look like this.

And it will look like this after baking.

Outline your cookie with piping consistency royal icing.

Also outline the bee.

Flood the cookie with flood consistency royal icing. You will need to use a skewer or scribe tool (pictured above) to move the icing to the edge and into the narrow areas.

When the flood icing is dry, add a yellow bee body.

Immediately add eyes and stripes. This technique is called wet on wet.

Keep working until all the bee bodies are complete.

Add pink icing to the wing area.

With an icing that is just a bit thinner than piping consistency, add your lettering. Practice piping on a plate first to be sure your icing is the correct consistency.

For more detail, add a bit of brushed embroidery to the bee wings. Outline the wings with piping consistency royal icing and then use a damp square tip brush to pull it inwards. Clean your brush off after every three or four strokes.

For even more pizazz you can add sanding sugar to the edge of the cookie. If you are planning on wrapping the cookies, I recommend skipping this step since sanding sugar can easily get knocked off and create a mess in the bags. I would only add this sparkly detail if the cookies are going to be served on a platter.

Once the cookie is completely dry, outline the cookie with piping consistency royal icing.

Have a plate of sanding sugar ready and gently dip your cookie in upside down.

Lift your cookie up out of the sugar and let it dry. Once the icing is dry you can use a soft brush to remove any stray sugar granules.

Here's a side by side comparison of the two designs. I think either would make your Valentine very happy.

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.....