Easy Valentine's Day Cookies!

While I AM a Baker/Cake Decorater, cookies aren't exactly my area of experitise. I'm more of a cake and cupcake kind of gal. :) However; since everyone loves sweets, cookies are great gift ideas so I thought I would share some super easy and fun ideas for decorating these Valentine's Day cookies using royal icing. This time of year you can easily purchase premade royal icing in tubes that are super easy to work with. If you are interested in making your own, check out my previous blog for a basic royal icing recipe.

-The first step of course is to roll out your cookies dough and cut out the hearts using a heart shaped cookies cutter. Once you have your baked cookies and they are nice and cool, you are ready to start  decorating. :)

-If you don't have the premade royal icing that come in the easy to decorate tubes, you'll want to put your icing into a piping bag with a writer decorating tip at the end. 

                                         -First pipe a border around the cookie like this.

-Next you want to fill in your cookie using a zig-zag motion like this.

-Once you're finished filling it in, keep your cookie on your work surface and give it a few shakes to get the icing to smooth out.

-After the icing is nice and smooth you can either leave them plain, or decorate them! You can add sprinkles, or use your other icing colors to pipe on designs of your choice. The possiblities are pretty much endless so feel free to get creative! Below is a picture of my favorite kind of sprinkles. They come in all kinds of colors and you can get them at craft stores and Wal-Mart. I love these things and I use them all of the time! <3  

(Don't worry if you mess up. You can always eat the "practice" ones.)

Happy Decorating!