Valentine's Day Sugar Cookies

Valentine's Day Sugar Cookies with icing and sprinkles, a delicious sweet treat to celebrate love. They are quick and easy to make with a few simple ingredients, and they can be stored for days in an airtight container. These delicious cookies are a big hit with kids and grown-ups alike.

The season of love is upon us once again, and what a better way to celebrate it than with some delicious homemade goodies that taste as good as they look. Romantic meals for two are a great way of showing off your cooking skills, and if you need some inspiration, I have this post: Valentine’s Day Dinner Ideas for a Night in full of yummy dishes for all tastes.

Cookies make a fabulous edible gift for any occasion, and these sugar cookies are particularly easy to make. They can be decorated in endless ways, depending on whatever occasion they are needed for. I used the same dough for my Christmas cookies, and they went down a treat.

And what a better shape for a Valentine's Day cookie than a heart shape! You could cut out heart shapes yourself, but if you use a heart-shaped cookie cutter, the job is so much easier and quicker too.

The cookies could be left undecorated, they are still yummy, no doubt about that, but they look so much better with a bit of icing, so I would highly recommend using it. There is no need to buy ready-made icing, you can make your own with only 3 ingredients.

HOW TO MAKE VALENTINE'S DAY SUGAR COOKIES

THE DOUGH

For the dough we only need 5 simple ingredients: butter, sugar, egg, flour and vanilla extract.

• beat the sugar and soften butter together
• add the egg and beat again to a creamy consistency
• add the vanilla extract and flour, and mix again
• shape the dough into a ball, cover it with clingfilm, and refrigerate for 20 minutes
• roll out the dough using a rolling pin, and use the cookie cutter to cut out heart-shaped cookies
• bake in the preheated oven at 180 degrees Celsius (350 Fahrenheit) for 9-10 minutes
• leave to cool completely before decorating

the icing

To make the icing we need 3 main ingredients: icing sugar, milk and red food colouring, plus any flavourings you like, vanilla extract is a great addition here.

• sift the icing sugar, add the milk and red food colouring, and mix well to get a runny smooth paste
• transfer the icing to a piping bag fitted with a small round nozzle and decorated each cookie
• add some sprinkles and leave the icing to harden

TIPS AND TRICKS

These super easy Valentine's Day cookies are a great fun to make with the kids too. While the icing part could get rather messy, the cutting out is definitely simple.

A few tips here: do make sure the cookies are completely cooled down before icing them, otherwise the icing will be too runny and make a right mess out the them. The icing does harden pretty quickly so there is not any need for more milk.

Do not store them while the icing is not proper set yet, as they will end up stuck to one another. But once set, they can be easily stored in an airtight container and they will last for a few good days - that's it, of they don't disappear before then.

They can be made in advance before the big day though, which helps with the romantic meal planning. Do give them a go, they are so delicious!

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