Show your love by baking and decorating these valentine-inspired cookies with your child. We made 2- and 3-inch cookies, but if your cookie cutters are of a different size, that will be fine as well. Use our simple sugar cookie recipe, or refrigerated sugar-cookie dough from the supermarket instead. Just divide the roll and roll out the dough on a well-floured surface until it's 1/8 inch thick.
1/2 cup chocolate chips, melted (white, milk, or semi-sweet chocolate)
Step 1
Start by making a batch of Simple Sugar Cookies and cutting them with heart-shaped cookie cutters. When the cookies have cooled completely, you can glaze them with a layer of very thin icing. (See the All-Purpose Icing recipe.)
Step 2
Let the icing glaze dry for at least an hour before decorating. You and your kids can have fun making tiered cookies and adding icing decorations, candy decorations, and candy roses.
DECORATING IDEAS
Tiered Cookies
1. Make two-tiered valentine cookies by stacking the 2-inch hearts on top of 3-inch hearts (or if you made different-sized cookies from what we used, stack the smaller cookie heart on top of the larger). Melt the chocolate morsels following the directions on the bag. (Parents should do this part.) Spread a dollop of the melted chocolate onto the back of a small heart with a paintbrush and place the small heart on the large one. Be careful placing the small hearts; once you've set them in place, they will be hard to move without disturbing the melted-chocolate glaze.
2. Before decorating the tiered cookies, let the chocolate dry for at least an hour.
Icing Decorations
1. If you want to pipe icing decorations onto cookies, cut the pointed end off a disposable pastry bag and insert a pastry tip. Fold back the top of the bag to make a 2-inch cuff. Fill the bag with several tablespoons of very stiff icing. (See the All-Purpose Icing recipe.) Pull up the cuff and twist the top of the bag until the icing starts to come out of the tip. You can also use a zip-close plastic bag that has been snipped in one corner with scissors.
2. Help your child hold the bag while piping icing onto the cookies. Make polka dots, borders, or your own designs. To write messages on cookies, use a very small pastry tip or cut a tiny hole in the corner of a zip-close bag. Before you try the real thing, practice on a piece of waxed paper.
Candy Decorations
1. To embellish cookies with candy decorations, try shaking on the colored and shaped sprinkles while the icing is still wet. Cut the jellybeans in half (parents should do this part), brush the cut ends with the melted chocolate, and place them around the cookies. Use a dab of the melted chocolate to attach large nonpareils. (You can use the melted chocolate to attach small, printed valentine messages, too.)
2. Let the icing and chocolate dry for at least an hour.
Candy Roses Decorations
1. To add a candy rose, press a 2-inch heart-shaped cookie cutter into a piece of fruit leather in four places. Cut out the hearts with scissors. (Parents should do this part.) Remove the paper and tightly roll one heart into a cone. Cut the remaining hearts vertically into two pieces and stick them to the cone so they make overlapping petals. The pieces will stick together easily.
2. Cut a 2-inch length of red licorice and press it firmly to the back of the rose for a stem.
3. Brush the back of the rose and stem with melted chocolate. Carefully place the rose onto a large cookie and let the chocolate dry for at least an hour.
