Valentines Day Surprise Cookies

It’s that time of year again where Christmas has passed, New Years celebrations are over and suddenly all the shops are selling things with hearts on….yes it’s less than a month until Valentines Day!

I always think it’s nicer to make your loved ones something special at this time of year and cookies or cake are always good. Today I’m going to show you how to make some Valentines cookies, these are not any old cookies though, they are filled with…….

And a few sprinkles:

You can’t go wrong with a few sprinkles on the inside of the cookies with sweetie treats.

So before we get to add these delights, you will need the following:

Cookie Dough, use your favourite recipe or packet mix

Plain flour, for dusting surfaces

Rolling pin

Gel food colouring in a variety of colours (I used Violet, Red, Green & Yellow)

Cookie sticks

Royal icing sugar mixed with some water and mixed into a thick consistency

A variety of stamps

Heart  shaped cookie cutters

A couple of baking sheets lined with baking paper

Wilton candy melts

First, make your cookie dough, then divide the dough into four and colour them using the gel food colours. I mainly use sugarpaste or run out icing to decorate the tops of my cookies but I thought it would make a nice change to actually colour the dough

Roll out the dough to about 3-5mm thick and cut out hearts

Use slightly smaller heart cutters to cut out the centres of some of the cookies

I purchased some type writer style lettering stamps from Hobbycraft last week, and these are perfect for stamping your own messages onto the unbaked cookie dough hearts….

….along with a few other tools to use to stamp other designs into the cookies

Bake the cookies in a preheated oven using the guidelines in your recipe. My cookies did run into a slight problem when they baked, the designs and messages I stamped into them kind of disappeared when they raised as they baked. (Uh-oh!!!) Fortunately, I thought “oh yeah, I used stamps” so out came the black food colouring and a paint brush and I stamped the loaded up stamps into the dents where the previous designs had risen out…phew!!

Next, brush or pipe the royal icing onto the cookies, which have the middles cut out and stick these to the bottom cookies

Dip the cookie sticks into the royal icing and pop between the middle and bottom cookies. and put some sweeties and sprinkles inside

Then you need to attach the top cookie

Melt the Wilton candy melts in a heatproof bowl in the microwave  or over a pan of simmering water. spread around the edges of the cookies, this helps to seal any gaps to prevent any sweets and sprinkles escaping from inside the cookies. Decorate the cookies with a sprinkling of sprinkles while the candy melts are still not quite dry.

Give to your loved ones to enjoy….

Yum!

Come back again soon as I have another Valentines gift tutorial on the way! Happy Baking!