Valentine’s Sugar Cookies – Three Ways!

 

Recently I worked on a little piece for Celebrations.com about how I celebrate Valentine’s Day each year. In that piece I talked about my mom’s famous sugar cookies and then I came to the blog to find the recipe so I could link back to it. I was SHOCKED to find that in all these years I’ve never actually shared the recipe with all of you (a huge fail on my part). These are the cookies my mom made all the time when we were little (and still does for special occasions). They’re great to ice but so yummy you can eat them straight (the orange zest adds an unexpected surprise). For today’s post the boys and I made them into Valentine’s Cookies, 3 ways!

 

Here’s What You’ll Need – Cookies

1 Tsp of Orange Zest

1 1/3 Cup of Crisco – Not butter, Crisco. We’re doing this Mama’s way!

1 1/2 Cup of Sugar

1 Tsp of Vanilla

2 Eggs

8 Tsp of Milk

4 Cups of Flour

3 Tsp of Baking Powder

Supplies – rolling pin, wax paper, food coloring

For Icing

1 Tsp of Light Kayro Syrup – makes your icing shiny

1 Tsp of Vanilla

1/4 Cup of Warm Water

3 Cups of Powdered Sugar

Food Coloring – I used “neon” colors for these lighter shades

 

First, preheat oven to 350. Next using a hand mixer or a stand up mixer combine the following ingredients: Orange zest, crisco, sugar, vanilla, eggs, milk. Blend well.

 

In a separate bowl combine flour and baking powder and blend well. With mixer on low, slowly add in flour mixture 1/2 a cup at a time allowing each addition to combine before adding more.

 

Now for this recipe I made two kinds of cookies (white and pink) so if you’re going to do that you’ll want to separate your dough in half so you can dye some of it. QUICK TIP – whenever you’re not working with your cookie dough, put it in the fridge. When sugar cookie dough gets warm it’s harder to hold it’s cookie cutter shape. For the white hearts continue as follows.

 

Now, many recipes will tell you to flour your counter and get to rolling out that dough but I do it a little differently. I place a large piece of wax paper down on the counter and then place a dough ball on top. Another wax paper goes down on top of the dough. I let a little of the wax paper sandwich I’ve created hang off the end of the counter and then I use my stomach to hold it in place while I roll out the dough using my pin… you can watch how I do this in a little video I made with Audrina Patridge a couple of years ago. The wax paper means that your counter and your rolling pin stay clean, which is plus since you’re already going to wash so many bowls after these cookies are done!

 

Before using your cookie cutter dip it into a little flour… this will keep the dough from sticking to it.

 

Next place your cookies on a cookie sheet with a silpat, some parchment paper or some foil with cooking spray. Bake for about 10 minutes at 350 and cool on wire racks.

 

To make the icing combine the kayro syrup, vanilla, and water in a bowl and blend well. Slowly add powdered sugar and beat with an electric mixer until combine.

 

Since I wanted to make conversation hearts I used “neon” food coloring to get the icing colors I needed. I just separated them into little bowls and made small batches of each color.

 

Next I iced each heart shaped cookie and allowed the icing to dry in the open air. Then I used red “writing” icing to write the little sayings… quick note on my writing. I was getting really frustrated that my words weren’t perfectly written and I almost didn’t send the final cookies to Dave jobs (their intended destination) because they weren’t pristine. But once again I reminded myself that when you bake or cook something out of love, it truly is the thought that counts. So long as it tastes delicious it doesn’t matter if you’re not a master cookie decorator!

 

For Jackson and Sawyer’s cookies we went a little smaller… x’s and o’s to be exact!

 

First I added a little red food coloring to that dough I set aside.

 

Then I mixed it up and turned it pink.

 

Next we rolled it out and then we used our alphabet cookie cutters from Grammy to make x’s and o’s. Baking cookies is such a great way to cook with your kiddos. All the measuring gives you a chance to talk about math “1/2 a cup + 1/2 cup makes a whole” and using a cookie cutter is fun. Yes, it slows you down, but I could use a little slow down every once in a while

 

After we baked them we put them into little bags for the boys teachers at school.

 

Lastly, now that I had both pink and white dough I decided to try and make a little tie dye.

 

I just loosely squished together the pink and white dough. Then I rolled it out.

 

The end result was so cute and is perfect if you have friends who don’t like icing on their cookies.

 

I hope you liked our Valentine’s cookies and I hope they inspire you to bake something soon with the ones you love! Happy Valentines Day!!