Heart Sugar Cookies

I made these for my daughter Georgia’s 2^nd birthday party together with some Dorothy the Dinosaur’s sugar cookies.  I made the cookies following this recipe and cut them out using a heart shaped cookie cutter.

I decided to make “cookie pops”, so I just inserted a pop stick into the cookies after cutting them out.  Do this slowly so you don’t break the dough.  Also, you may want to keep your cookies a bit thicker, just to make sure that they don’t break.

Put the cookie dough shapes back into the freezer for 10 minutes to 15 minutes to chill again (or you can keep them in the fridge for longer, depending on how warm it is where you live).  They will then hold their shape better when baked.

Bake in a pre-heated oven at 175°C – 350°F for 8 to 12 minutes (I kept mine 12 minutes as they were quite large and thick) or until the edges become golden brown.

Let the cookies cool to room temperature and then decorate them.

I decorated these with Royal Icing (you can find the recipe and a list of all the tools you need here) and coloured it with food colouring (both gels and liquid).

You start by outlining the shapes with a very thin line of icing and then fill it in (“flooding”).  Some people use a thinner consistency of icing to flood the cookies, but I followed Marian’s (Sweetopia) suggestion and used the same icing (a bit thicker) to outline and flood because it saved me time.  Also, these cookies were a spur of the moment idea so I did not have all the tools I needed (I only had a #2 tip and only 1 of those!), so I wanted to keep the icing types to a bare minimum.

After flooding them, I used a different colour to draw some drops/small circles, then I dragged the drops with a toothpick to create a “heart looking shape” inside the heart shaped cookies.

I also made some “marbled” cookies, by drawing thin lines of different colours and then dragging them down (or up and down) with a toothpick.

Anyhow, I was quite satisfied with the results!  And had lots of fun!

I am linking this recipe to #cookielove!  Make sure to click on the link to check out all the other amazing cookie recipes! 🙂