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Valentine's Day Sugar Cookies

Course Dessert
Prep Time 2 hours
Cook Time 20 minutes
Servings 25 cookies

Ingredients

  • 1 cup (220g) unsalted butter, room temperature
  • 1 cup (200g) cane sugar
  • 3 cups (300g) all-purpose flour, sifted
  • 2 large egg yolks 35g
  • 1 tbsp 15g vanilla extract
  • 1/4 tsp sea salt
  • 1 recipe royal icing or your favorite pre-packaged store brand.
  • food coloring
  • assorted sprinkles I used sprinkles from Sprinkle Pop and DecoPac.

Instructions

  1. In a large mixing bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until super smooth and creamy. Next, add the eggs and vanilla and mix until fully incorporated.
  2. In a separate large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour and salt.
  3. A third at a time, mix the flour into the creamed sugar until combined. Mix for another 15 seconds. Do not over-mix. Over-mixing will develop the gluten structure, creating a dense and chewy bread-like cookie. The dough should come together easily, but still have a slightly crumbly consistency.
  4. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead it until the dough comes together further. This should only take a minute. At this point, it should no longer be crumbly, but smooth and easy to shape. Divide the dough into 2 equal parts.
  5. Lay a 12x12 inch sheet of parchment onto the counter and dust it with flour. Roll out one of the chunks of dough onto the parchment until it is just under a 1/4 inch thick. Repeat for the remaining piece of dough.
  6. Lay the layers of parchment and dough on top of one another, and place onto a baking sheet. Cover the dough with plastic wrap and chill it in the freezer for at least 1 hour.
  7. Preheat your oven to 300°F (150°C).
  8. Take the dough out of the freezer and lay the parchment on the table.

  9. Keeping the dough on the parchment, use heart shaped cookie cutters to cut out heart shapes in the dough. Set the shapes onto clean parchment lined cookie sheets at least an inch apart from one another. Knead the leftover dough together and roll it out again into a sheet just shy of a 1/4 inch thick. If the dough is too soft, chill it again before cutting out additional cookie shapes. Repeat until all of the dough has been used up. You should have 20 to 25 cookies.

  10. Bake them in the center of the oven for 20 to 25 minutes or until slightly golden at the edges.

  11. Allow the cookies to cool completely before decorating with royal icing, or eat as is!

  12. If using homemade icing, add 1 to 2 drops of food coloring for every 1/2 cup of royal icing.

  13. Using a sandwich baggie with a small hole cut off the the corner, or pastry bag with a #4 tip, pipe a heart in royal icing top of each cookie. Wait three minutes before topping the icing with your choice of sprinkles.

  14. Allow the royal icing to dry for 4 to 8 hours before serving.