These are heart shaped cookies I made for my daughter to bring to school for valentines day and a few extra to bring into work.  I used Rose’s sugar cookie dough and cut out smaller hearts in the middle.  I filled the space in with crushed red candies so that they would look like stained glass. 

I was quite happy with the results and my daughter is just thrilled with them.  But I really haven’t done sugar cookies before and didn’t realize how labour intensive they are.  I think that I finally got to bed about 1:30am.

The first picture shows them all baked and ready to decorate.  The second picture is the finished product.

They look fantastic Liza!

Liza… Those are beautiful.  How wonderful your daughter will feel to be able to take something so special to share with her classmates.  The three frosted cookies are beyond perfect.  I would absolutely be your valentine for one of those!

Janet

Thank-you littlelottie and Janet for your kind words.  Yes, she is very excited to take them to school tomorrow.  Hope they survive the bus trip to school. 

Those cookies are just beautiful!  So perfect!  The frosted ones are—OMG— how did you do it?  So beautiful!  Just like little Limgoes boxes!!!!

Thanks so much Anne.  I first outlined the cookies with stiff royal icing and then flooded them with thin royal icing.  Which took like forever.  While the royal icing was still wet I dragged thinned out red royal icing with a toothpick to make the swirls.  I kept looking at the clock thinking, am I every going to finish?

Wow!  That’s some serious effort.  Certainly paid off, though.  You sure know what you’re doing, that’s all I’ve got to say!!!!

wow those are awesome!!  You ever try the food coloring markers?? Reason I am asking is becuase i tried them on my baseball cookies (I did fondant with red lines) and they kind of look a lot like the flooding and dragging…but Waaaaay easier!

Thank you SweetNess.  You know, I forgot that I had the markers in the fridge.  But I think that the white royal icing would have to have been quite hard to write on.  I only had maybe a day and a half for the cookies to dry.  The surface was quite dry, but if you pushed down on the cookies, the royal icing would squish.  I don’t know if they would work properly unless the royal icing was really hard.

Oh my gosh, Liza, those are amazing!  I’ll bet your daughter was so proud to bring those in!  I do make sugar cookies but don’t decorate them nearly as much nor as meticulously, and they still seem to drag on for hours- these must have really taken a long time!

I just love the idea to make the stain glass insert!

My heart shapes are a bit humble this year, as my cake needed to be round in order to bake in the right pan.

We had a family pizza night for Valentine’s last night, so I shaped Rose’s super easy no-knead pizza dough into hearts.  My daughter was very surprised and pleased with them.

For her class in school today, I sent in the RHC chocolate butter cupcakes with white chocolate mousseline (cocoa butter and vanilla) and a tempered chocolate heart.  The hearts were quick-tempered milk chocolate, two circles side-by-side, then with the back of a spoon I spread/dragged the chocolate down to form the heart shape.  They were very fast and simple.

For our family cake, I made a lemon berry cream cake.  No fun shape there, but I’ll post it anyway.    It’s the RHC chiffon layer, lemon this time.  Rose gave directions over on the blog and mentioned it’s her favorite from the book, so I knew I had to try it.  Especially paired with berries, I think it may just be my favorite as well.  (Maybe it ties with the tangerine version…).  The cake is frosted and filled with lemon-vanilla whipped cream (lemon oil, vanillla extract, sugar, stabilized with agar).  Blueberries in the middle and raspberries on top.  The lemon-vanilla flavor of the cake and cream paired very well with the blueberries and raspberries, can’t wait to make this again when they are in season.

My one note for this cake is to make sure and use good, thick, well-fitting cake strips and to cover every bit of the pan, as the cake pulled away from the side a bit where the strip had been loose and didn’t cover well.  I think that this cake shrinks away from the pan when the sides get even a little overbaked.  But even so it was very delicious.

Julie, those are gorgeous, gorgeous and gorgeous!

The cupcakes are sooooo top-hat-white-tie-and-tails looking! I love them!  Awesome way to make the hearts!
If I can ever get over my love of super-rich buttercream, I’ll have to do a whipped cream something, because yours are always so pretty!  I can’t figure out how whipped cream can hold up a cake layer, though!  Your shells are sooo pretty!
And the pizzas—yum!  I love the rustic heart shapes!

Liza - 14 February 2011 12:01 PM

Thank you SweetNess.  You know, I forgot that I had the markers in the fridge.  But I think that the white royal icing would have to have been quite hard to write on.  I only had maybe a day and a half for the cookies to dry.  The surface was quite dry, but if you pushed down on the cookies, the royal icing would squish.  I don’t know if they would work properly unless the royal icing was really hard.

thats how it is when i write on fondant too (since fondant is soft) so i just barely touch the tip of the pen to the fondant and it makes a really thin nice line. I dont use Royal icing ever so I have no idea though lol

and Julie, OMG i want that cake.

Oh Julie, you were very ambitious!!  Everything looks amazing!!  That cake looks so luscious with all that whipped cream and berries.

You daughter probably was surrounded today when she brought them into school.  So cute with the chocolate hearts ontop. 

I want to try a piece of each of your pizza’s.  What kinds did you make?  Not that it would really matter to me, I would eat all of them.  I absolutely love the heart shapes.  You are very inventive.  Heart shapes aren’t just for desserts anymore.

Liza, those are some serious heart shaped cookies. I’ve made Rose’s sugar cookies a couple of times - they are amazing. And yes decorating is time consuming. You did an awesome job though - I can’t believe it’s your 1st time.

Julie, I LOVE THE CHIFFON CAKE! It looks soooo good. The raspberries are so tempting and your piping is impeccable. The little cupcakes are adorable and the pizza looks fun. I never would have thought of shaping pizza into hearts.

My contribution is a bit sad. This is quail egg indulgence cake (for this week’s Heavenly Cake Bakers). The cake broke when I flipped it from the cooling rack, so I’m re-naming it into “broken heart” cake, for fun . It is really easy to make and has an interesting taste that I attributed to quail eggs.