Valentine Treat Preview

I just finished packaging my last batch of cookies for tomorrow's Valentine Sweet Sale at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral and am happy to say everything is looking great and I'm anxious to start selling and raising funds for Hunger Ministries. 

Here are a few pictures from a busy week preparing for the sale and a few previews of what will be for sale tomorrow from 9 a.m. to noon in Kempton Hall at the church (147 NW 19th Ave, Portland Oregon). I hope to see you there!

I dedicated Thursday and Friday to cookie baking and decorating. These brushed embroidery cookies were the first design I tackled.

I also had to include a heart design. I used a heart cookie cutter to make an impression in the cookies before baking. The first step in decorating these was to paint the heart with pink royal icing.

These cookies demonstrate the three steps to decorating the heart cookies.

Finished cookies that just need to dry before packaging.

Of course I also had to make some French Macarons. I thought cherry would be a good choice for Valentine's Day.

I filled the macarons with a Morello cherry buttercream.

I also made some salted caramel macarons because they are always well received and I thought they would look nice packaged alongside the  cherry macarons.

The final touch in packaging the macarons was a homemade tag and some butcher's twine.

Saturday morning it was truffle packaging time. Here I am filling truffle boxes with Dave who with his wife Cheryl made all of the truffles. Our friends Cindy and Terri also came by to help with the packaging.

Each five-piece box contains three dark and two milk chocolate truffles.

The final touch to the truffle boxes was adding a pretty bow and a paper heart. Terri and Cindy tied all of the ribbons and did a wonderful job. I love the way the boxes turned out and I have my friends to thank. If the bow tying was all up to me, I'd still be struggling — it's definitely not my talent.  But like Terri said today, "many hands make light work." It was a team effort and I'm grateful.

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.

Teal And Gold Heart Cookies

This elegant cookie design came about because I wanted to make some simple heart cookies for a sale this weekend but was determined to stay away from using pinks and reds which I felt just wouldn't be right for Fall.

I'm really pleased with this combination of teal and gold. For a little extra oomph and shimmer I also painted the border with gold luster dust.

To make these I used a round scalloped cutter to cut the cookies and then after baking I outlined them with gold royal icing.

After the border dried for 30 minutes, I flooded the cookies with white royal icing.

I let the cookies dry overnight and the next day piped hearts onto the cookies. If you don't feel comfortable doing this freehand, you could use an edible ink marker to draw a heart that you could trace.

The final touch was the addition of gold luster dust on the border. To do this, I put a teaspoon of luster dust in a small container and added just enough vodka to make a paint. Then I simply painted it on with a soft brush. Let the cookies dry completely before packaging.

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.....