Valentine's Themed Cookies | Tutorial

Hello my lovelies!

Valentine's day is only a few days away and so I thought I'd make a valentine's themed post!

 This won't be my usual beauty or make-up related tutorial because I wanted to try something a little bit different, but I hope you'll enjoy it nonetheless! And it doesn't matter if you're in a relationship or single this Valentine's because anyone can bake and decorate cookies. Yum!

Ingredients:
100g Butter or Margarine
50g Sugar
A few drops of Vanilla extract
175g Plain Flour

Method:
1. Preheat your oven to 150°c (Gas mark 2)
2. Mix butter and sugar together in a bowl (until light and fluffy)
3. Add the few drops of Vanilla Extract and mix
4. Add  flour and mix well.
5. Knead the mixture until it becomes dough like and smooth
6. Using a rolling pin roll the dough out to approximately 5mm, to prevent the dough sticking lightly flour the surface before hand
7. Cut the dough into your desired shapes, lighting flour the cutter so dough doesn't stick (eg. Hearts)
8. Bake for 25 minutes or until golden brown
9. Leave to cool for approx. 20 minutes
10. Have some fun decorating!

My Valentine's themed cookies

I went for heart shaped cookies as I thought that they would turn out cutest:

Cookies cooling on a cooling rack

I left my cookies to cool for about 30 minutes because I didn't want to risk them still being hot and melting my icing and decorations! I would say about 15-20 minutes would have been long enough but I wanted to be 100% sure that they were completely cool.

Close up of a freshly baked Heart Cookie, yum!

Once I had made sure all my cookies were cool I put them all onto a tray ready for me to decorate, that's the really fun bit!

Lets get decorating!

I first outlined the cookies with a red icing gel pen. This was for aesthetics but also to keep the pink icing I used next from dripping off the sides of the cookie.

Don't you just want to eat them already?

It's really difficult to use icing pens when they're new and I'm also not a professional so that's why my outline is a bit messy in places. But it's the having fun that counts when you're decorating!

Om nom nom!

 I was lazy for this next bit and bought some ready made pink icing, all you had to do was mix it and add water, you can tell me off if you want.

Icing's on!

To get an even spread of icing all over the cookies I used the back of a tea spoon dipped in hot water.  You can use this technique with glacé icing or butter icing.

They're starting to look good!

Next I put a few pieces of milk chocolate into a strong food bag and put the bag into a cup of hot water. I then left the chocolate there to melt for 10 minutes. (Ensure that the food bags you use are suitable for reheating/cooking in a microwave)

After the 10 minutes I took the bag out of the water, dried it off and then cut a tiny hole in the corner of the bag. By doing this I was able to use the bag as a piping bag. Using the bag I squeezed the melted chocolate onto the cookies and spread it evenly with a knife.

(Remember do not use the spoon dipped in hot water for this because water ruins chocolate!)

Looking tasty!

I left the icing and chocolate to harden over night so that the next morning I could fully decorate the cookies. I used a variety of different toppings from sprinkles and chocolate gratings to white pearls and sweets.

Here are my finished cookies!

My personal favourite cookie is this one, I don't know why though, I just really like it:

I hope you enjoyed this post because I certainly enjoyed making it! ... And I enjoyed eating the cookies too xD

If you make some Valentine's cookies tag me or send me a picture of them on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, I'd love to see what you do!

*I hope I brought you a sprinkle of joy*

Love

Claire

x