How to Decorate Valentine’s Day Conversation Heart Cookies
Today we’re learning how to decorate cookies, more specifically Valentines cookies! These Valentines Day cookies are made to look like conversation hearts, when it comes to sugar cookie decorating ideas you can’t beat a classic.
These decorated sugar cookies are made with royal icing. It’s a great option for making adorable cookies and in this case it lets us make our Valentines cookies look just like conversation hearts! This just might be my favorite of my Valentine’s Day recipes.
What is royal icing?
Royal icing is a very sweet icing that dries hard. It’s made with powdered sugar, meringue powder or egg whites, and coloring or flavoring. Royal icing is typically used to decorate cookies or gingerbread houses. It is great for making intricate designs and essentially gives you a way to turn Valentines cookies or ANY cookies into tiny works of art.
Royal icing is different from frosting in that it dries to a hard shell while frosting stays more light and fluffy. It’s mostly a texture difference and a necessary one since we need to be able to use our royal icing to create beautiful designs on our cookies!
There are two main consistencies for royal icing: flood and piping. Flood consistency is thinner and it is used for filling in larger areas while piping consistency is used for lining the edges of our cookies and creating fine details. They’re made with the same ingredients and the consistency is achieved by adding a bit more water to go from piping to flood consistency.
Once they’re decorated, royal icing cookies take about 6-8 hours to dry out fully.
Ingredients needed for Valentines cookies:
- 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ¾ cup (1 ½ sticks) unsalted butter, softened
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs, room temperature
- 1 teaspoon almond or vanilla extract
Here is what you will need for the royal icing:
- 4 cups powdered sugar
- 3 tablespoons meringue powder
- 6-9 tablespoons water, room temperature
- Gel Coloring
How to make Valentine’s Day cookies:
Making these Valentines Day cookies is not very difficult, much like my Conversation Heart Sugar Cookie Bark. This is actually a great sugar cookie base that you can use year round for any season, shape, or theme! Of course today we’re making heart shaped cookies so we can decorate them as conversation hearts.
- In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt, set aside
- In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 2-3 minutes
- Add eggs and extract and beat until creamy and well combined
- Gradually add the flour mixture, beating well after each addition. Do not overbeat though.
- Wrap dough in a piece of plastic wrap, freeze about 20 minutes or chill in refrigerator at least 2 hours
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees F
- Line baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone mats
- Roll dough out to ⅛ inch thickness, cut with heart shaped cookie cutter
- Place on baking sheet and bake for 6-8 minutes, or until cookie bottom is lightly golden brown
- Cool on wire rack completely
Don’t skip out on chilling the dough. This is not only going to help make sure the decorated sugar cookies look and taste great at the end it’s also going to make the dough manageable. If you don’t want misshapen cookies, chill the dough for these Valentines cookies as described above!
How to make icing for decorated sugar cookies:
This is how we make the royal icing for our Valentines cookies. I’ll share some tips below for how to make the icing shades match and how to get the perfect consistency.
- In a large bowl of a stand mixer, whisk together powdered sugar and meringue powder on low for 30 seconds
- Add water one tablespoon at a time until desired consistency. You will need different consistencies for outlining, flooding and writing.
Tips for how to decorate cookies with the perfect icing:
- Separate the royal icing into smaller bowls while it is still thick. Thin the icing out to varying degrees after it is already tinted the color you want it. It’s so much easier to get the colors to match this way!
- Add the water very slowly until you reach the consistency you want for each level. Outlining and writing should be a bit thicker while flooding icing needs to be a bit thinner and able to flood the surface of the cookie!
- Don’t add more sugar to try and thicken icing once you start thinning it out, instead use a few tablespoons of the uncolored thick icing.
- Flooding icing should be the consistency of honey, piping and writing icing should be more like toothpaste when thinned out.
- Use piping bags or you can use plastic bags with the corner trimmed off. You’ll have more precise results with piping bags!
- First outline the edge of the cookie with the thicker icing and then use the matching color in a flooding consistency to fill in the middle! Tap the cookies slightly to remove any bubbles and then allow the cookies to dry a bit before adding the writing on top.
- If you want the cookie to have a completely smooth surface you will want to add the writing or phrase while the base color is still wet so the two and melt together!
Drawing a blank for how to decorate sugar cookies?
Here are some of the common sayings you can put on your conversation heart cookies. They add new ones sometimes and change things up so feel free to make up your own, customize them for your friends or family, or use these options:
- Love
- Kiss
- Hugs
- XOXO
- Cutie
- BFF
- Be Mine
Here are a few more Valentine’s Day treats for you:
Sugar Cookie Popcorn – this is great for treats to bring to school for kids!
Cupid’s Crunch Chex Mix – This party mix is my absolutely favorite snack around this time of year.
Copycat Frosted Swig Sugar Cookies – these are so pretty for any holiday!
Molten Chocolate Lava Cakes – for all of those chocolate lovers out there!
Brown Sugar M&M Blondies – you will love how easy these blondies are!
- 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ¾ cup (1 ½ sticks) unsalted butter, softened
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs, room temperature
- 1 teaspoon almond or vanilla extract
- 4 cups powdered sugar
- 3 tablespoons meringue powder
- 6-9 tablespoons water, room temperature
- Gel Coloring
- In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt, set aside
- In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 2-3 minutes
- Add eggs and extract and beat until creamy and well combined
- Gradually add the flour mixture, beating well after each addition. Do not overbeat though.
- Wrap dough in a piece of plastic wrap, freeze for about 20 minutes or chill in refrigerator at least 2 mours
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees F
- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or silicone mat
- Roll dough out to ⅛ inch thickness, cut with heart shaped cookie cutter
- Place on baking sheet and bake for 6-8 minutes, or until cookie bottom is lightly golden brown
- Cool on wire rack completely
- In a large bowl of a stand mixer, whisk together powdered sugar and meringue powder on low for 30 seconds
- Add water one tablespoon at a time until desired consistency. You will need different consistencies for outlining, flooding and writing.
- Divide the icing into bowls, and mix with desired color
- Add icing to decorator bag fitted with a small round tip, #4 or #5
- The icing should be thin, but not too thin.
- Line cookie around the edge, then fill with icing
- Gently shake or tap the cookie to spread the icing
- To write on cookie, add red icing to bag fitted with a small round tip, #2
