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.