Valentine's Day Cookies

I have been trying to practice my skills at decorating cookies, and I thought I'd try out a new royal icing recipe that my cousin shared with me (not to mention a yummy, super easy sugar cookie recipe, too!). The whole "outlining" and "flooding" tasks were very new to me, but I just had to try it! And it wasn't too hard! Here's what I came up with...


Not too shabby, eh?

Here are the two recipes I used for the cookies and icing.

ROLLED SUGAR COOKIES
Ingredients:
*3 cups all-purpose flour
*1/2 teaspoon salt
*1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
*1 cup sugar
*1 large egg
*2 teaspoon vanilla
*food coloring (if you want to dye your dough!)

1. Whisk together the flour and salt in a medium bowl.

2. Cream together the butter and sugar with your mixer until light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla and mix until well blended.

3. With the mixer on low, gradually add the flour mixture to the butter mixture until the two are thoroughly blended. If your design calls for adding food coloring, do so now, and blend well.

4. Turn the dough onto a work surface and divide into two or three equal portions. Form each one into a rough disk. Now you're ready to roll, chill, and cut out cookie shapes. NOTE: It's best to form dough into a disk and roll out onto wax paper. Cover the top with wax paper as well and put in fridge to chill for 20-30 min. Using the wax paper helps with less mess [no flour to use!] and makes it easier to roll. The dough will be nice and smooth and the wax paper will peel off easily when chilled.

5. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

6. After you've rolled and cut the dough and the coolie shapes are on parchment-lined cookie sheets, bake them in the middle rack of your oven for 12-16 minutes or until the cookies start to turn slightly golden around the edges.

7. Cool the cookies completely before icing!


ROYAL ICING**
Ingredients:
*4 tablespoons meringue powder
*scant 1/2 cup water
*1 pound powder sugar
*1/2 - 1 teaspoon light corn syrup (optional- helps add shine to icing!)
*few drops of clear extract for flavor (optional. i like to use lemon juice)

1.Combine the meringue powder and water. Beat until combined and foamy with electric mixer.

2. Sift (important!!) in the powdered sugar and beat on low to combine.

3. Add in the corn syrup and extract if desired.

4. Increase speed to med-high/high and beat for about 5 minutes, just until the icing is glossy and stiff peaks form. Don't overbeat!

5. Cover with plastic wrap touching the icing or divide and color using gel paste food coloring and start decorating!

**This recipe is perfect for outlining your cookies. Once you've outlined, add a small amount of water until icing is smoother, and use that to flood your cookies- once your outline is dry, of course!


After I made all the cookies and iced them, I let them sit for a day before packaging them up! I used a super cute print-out from I Heart Faces to decorate the bags. (Become a fan of hers on facebook and it's free in her Exclusive tab!) Instead of adding a picture, I left the circle gray and wrote names in the empty space. Once that was done, I passed them out to friends and family and tried not to steal any for myself...



CREDITS: Rolled Sugar Cookie Recipe came from Cookie Craft Christmas and the royal icing recipe came from Bake at 350.