Royal Icing Chocolate Valentine Cookies

Happy Valentine's Day Everyone!

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I hope that you are spending this day with someone you love!

My daughter Tati and I made these royal icing cookies over the weekend.  She is taking some to her friends at school   They are fun and turned out so well.  We love the chocolate cookie with the royal icing; it tastes like a brownie cookie.  We have made these cookies before and love them -- they contrast well with the pale colors of the royal icing.

Recipe and Instructions for Chocolate Sugar Cookies

1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour

3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder-- this is a lot, but it makes for a rich, dark cookie

1-1/4 teaspoons baking powder

1/8 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup butter, softened

1-1/4 cups white sugar

1 egg

1. Sift together the flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt; set aside. In a medium bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in the egg. Gradually stir in the sifted ingredients to form a soft dough. Divide dough into 2 pieces, flatten and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 2 hours or put in freezer for 15 minutes or until firm and ready to cut out cookies.

2. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough out to 1/4 inch in thickness. Cut into desired shapes with cookie cutters. Dough is sticky so be sure to add more granulated sugar to the rolling surface as needed. Place cookies 1- 1/2 inches apart onto cookie sheets.

3. Bake for 7-8 minutes in the preheated oven. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Royal Icing -- Instructions for Royal Icing were borrowed from my sister Jacqueline at Purple Chocolat Home.

The secret to the icing is to get the Royal Icing thin enough that it melts back into itself as you count to 5.

3/4 C. warm water

5 T. meringue powder or powdered egg whites

1 tsp. cream of tartar

2 1/4 lb. powdered sugar

In mixer with paddle attachment, mix the water and meringue powder on lowest speed until well blended. Add the cream of tartar. Then a dd the powdered sugar and set a kitchen timer for 10 minutes. Mix with paddle for 10 minutes.  This gives you the typical royal icing.  You will want to thin it down significantly.Add an additional water 1 T. at a time. We added about 9-10 more tablespoons. It should be thin enough to form a ribbon that disappears back into the mass of the frosting by the count of 5. It has to hold its shape, but not too much.

Color your royal icing.  We left some white and colored some a bright pink.  We used gel colors.

Then pipe around the outline of the cookie.  This is a lighter pink; we decided we liked the darker better.

Work on one cookie at at a time.  Then fill in the cookie with more royal icing.  I used a small rubber spatula to do this.

Then with the white royal icing we made dots in a heart shape.

Then with the blunt end of a wooden skewer we dragged the hearts together and voila!  Sorry didn't get this step on film!
 

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Enjoy and Have a Happy Valentine's Day!

Posted with the following:

 Made By You Monday, Porch Club Bake-Off, Tidy Mom