Love Note Valentine Butter Cookies

I love baking for Valentine’s Day!  Normally sweet treats get even sweeter with hearts galore. One of my favorite cookies for decorating during the holidays is spritz. I find them a lot quicker and easier than homemade sugar cookies which have to be rolled out. After discovering how to actually make sprinkles and sugars stick after they are baked, they’ve become a yearly tradition using the Wilton spritz recipe.  And if you didn’t know it already, your cookie press designed for making spritz cookies probably has a heart shaped disc, perfect for making Valentine’s Day treats. Unfortunately for me, I broke a piece of plastic off my cookie press and I need to replace it. The only cookies I can make with it now are the bar cookies. But that didn’t stop me from making some Valentine cookies with it.

I decided to make some love note cookies with my bars. They are the perfect shape for creating envelopes with loves notes for your special someone.  I decorated these in a short amount of time but you can certainly get more creative and deluxe with your cookies. I think there is a lot of potential for fun ideas with this concept!

Ingredients

makes 7-8 dozen cookies (Wilton recipe)

1 1/2 cups butter (3 sticks)
1 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
2 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder

Directions

Cream butter and sugar thoroughly. Add egg, milk, vanilla and almond extract. Beat well. Stir together dry ingredients (flour & baking powder) in separate bowl and gradually add to creamed mixture. Mix until dough is smooth. DO NOT CHILL!  Follow the instructions on your cookie press, using the bar or ribbon disc to create bar cookies, placing them on an ungreased cookie sheet. (I love my silicone baking sheets and parchment paper but this is one of the few cookies that just really don’t need it. They turn out perfect and leave really no mess, all on their own!) Bake in a preheated oven at 375 degrees for 10-12 minutes. Cool cookies on a cooling rack.

Once cooled, it is time to decorate!

A few years ago while visiting Wilton on a fun blog trip, I learned that piping gel can be turned into your own edible glue! I like to use a decorating bag and a small #3 tip for cookies. The size of the tip will determine how thick your lines will be. Then simply outline where you’d like your sugars or sprinkles to go.  Pour your sugars and shake of the excess and that is it! I also like to use a toothpick for fixing any mistakes and pushing my sugars and sprinkles around. It works great for words where it is very important to see where some lines begin and end.

The piping gel will not affect the taste of the cookies and has a sweet, mild flavor.

If you are interested in seeing a cookie press in action or more on how I decorate using piping gel, check out my old holiday spritz post from a few years ago.