Valentine's Day Sugar Cookies

4.75 from 4 reviews

Valentine's Day Sugar Cookies

Valentine's Day Sugar Cookies are classic, cut-out sugar cookies shaped like hearts and decorated with royal icing in ten fantastic designs.

Course Dessert

Cuisine American

Prep Time 20

Cook Time 12

Total Time 32

Servings cookies

Calories 293kcal

Author Lise Sullivan Ode

Ingredients

For the sugar cookies

3 cups all purpose flour or 1 lb, if you are weighing your flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 sticks unsalted butter, softened 8 ounces total
1 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste
1/2 teaspoon almond extract

For the royal icing

16 ounces powdered sugar
1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon meringue powder
1/3 cup water, plus more if too thick see below

Instructions

For the cookies

Preheat oven to 350°F. In a medium bowl, add flour, baking powder & salt (measuring the flour with a scale is the most accurate). Using a whisk, stir to combine and get the lumps out. Set aside.
In a large bowl, add butter and beat with an electric mixer for 1 minute on medium. Turn to low and gradually add sugar. Turn to medium and beat 3 minutes. Add the egg and vanilla and beat another minute. With the mixer on low, gradually add the flour mixture.
Blend until the dough begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl. Take the dough out of the bowl and place on a large piece of parchment paper. Use your hands to knead the dough for a few minutes. Divide the dough into two sections and wrap with parchment paper. Let chill in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes.
To roll dough, place another piece of parchment paper on top of dough and roll with a rolling pin until the dough is between 1/8" and 1/4" thick. Cut into 3" hearts and remove the excess dough. Don't move the hearts, leave them where they are and place on a cookie sheet. Bake for 10-13 minutes or until slightly golden brown around the edges. Let them cool and decorate with royal icing (or you can freeze them before decorating and keep them for several months). Makes 20 heart cookies.

For the royal icing

Place all ingredients in a large bowl and beat with an electric mixer on low for 6 minutes. It will be very thick and fluffy. Add 2 tablespoons of water and mix to combine. That's your medium consistency (it should be like toothpaste). If it seems really thick. Add another tablespoon of water. Mix well. Take half the icing and put in another bowl (cover bowl with saran wrap - icing dries out quickly)*. Add another few teaspoons of water to remaining icing (add one teaspoon at a time, then mix). It should run off the spoon like Elmer's glue. That is your flood consistency. (If it seems too thick, add a little more water. Make sure you only add 1/4 teaspoon at a time until it runs easily off the spoon but you don't want it too liquidie either.) Divide and color as desired to decorate the cookies. *Always keep bowls of icing covered when not using.
For these cookies, I divided the icing as follows. Medium consistency: one third of the icing pink, one third red, and the remaining third I split into two bowls (half green and half remained white). Flood icing: I divided equally into 3 bowls - red, pink and white. Note: I used Americolor food coloring.

Decorating the cookies

First create your mini rosette hearts. Add medium red icing in a pastry bag fitted with a #16 tip. Repeat with pink. Pipe tiny swirls onto a parchment lined sheet pan. Let dry completely - at least one hour or overnight.
Meanwhile do the designs with dried icing. I made 3 red, 2 white and 2 pink. Add the flood icings to 3 different tipless bags (one white, one pink and one red). Cut a small amount off tip (a little less than 1/8 inch). You don't want to cut off too much or your piping line will be too thick. Pipe a border around the cookie, then fill in with more icing and use a toothpick to fill in any holes. Let them dry for about at least an hour.
Next, do the wet icing designs. You will work on these one at a time. See the blog post for more specific instructions. For example, to make a red heart with white polka dots, pipe the border with red flood and fill in with red flood. Use white flood to immediately pipe the dots before the red dries.
Add details to dried icing cookies such as mini rosettes and piped lettering. Use extra medium consistency icing to "glue" rosettes. Use green icing with a #352 tip to pipe leaves. After letting the cookies dry, you can use edible gold luster dust paint to brush onto lettering. To make "paint" mix edible luster dust with a little bit of vodka or lemon extract. Stir until smooth. Edible luster dust is available online or at any store with a cake decorating section.

Notes

Pro-Tip - If you live in a humid climate such as Florida, it might take longer for your cookies to dry (up to 24 hours). To speed up the process, here's a trick. Turn your oven light on (not the actual oven) and place trays of wet royal icing cookies in the lighted oven for about 30 minutes to help them dry quicker. You could also try a hair dryer on the cool air setting.

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