Good Things by David

You can surprise your sweetheart with a few envelope-shaped sugar cookies this Valentine's Day if you plan a few days in advance.  Even if you don't have a cookie cutter in this shape (I don't), you can still create a few of these cute edibles.  Very simple and easily accomplished by anyone. The Valentine's Day hearts above, are ones that I've created in the past.  They are customer favorites, so I make dozens upon dozens of them every single year.  Those are easy to make too. For the envelopes, cut out as many cookie dough squares as you can, and then slice off the top two corners of each square to create the shape of the envelope right before baking.  That's all there is to it!  If you have a house-shaped cookie cutter, you can try using that for the envelopes. For the royal icing colors:  mix Chefmaster 'Super Red' until you get the desired shade of red.  For the pink, mix a couple of drops of Chefmaster 'Fuchsia' until you get a light pink (u...

The last of the Valentine's Day cookies for 2020 are undoubtedly sweet.  I narrowed down the hues of the cookies to four colors in order to keep things effortless and straightforward.  This in no way limited the range of designs that I created for the folks here in town.    Take a look!   A rich, deep chocolate brown royal icing always looks very tempting and striking on a cookie, no matter how it's used.  For Valentine hearts, it's a winner.  Add to this a very bright pink and dark red to round out the hues, and of course, a bit of white to lighten the palette.  With these four colors, heart sugar cookies come together in a matter of 1-2 days, depending on the amount of treats that you have to ice. This set of hearts sitting on Wedgwood white bone china and British lustreware demitasse cups are perhaps my favorite of the bunch.  It's all about the dotted border. Using a #2 piping tip, add red and pink dots along the ...

It's not necessary to reinvent the wheel when it comes to making new sugar cookies.  For my first round of Valentine's Day sugar cookies this year, I went with the easiest technique imaginable.  Dots!  Piping royal icing dots is not the hardest thing for anyone of any skill.  What's more, if you want to make quick work of your Valentine's Day cookies don't flood them.  Bake pristine sugar cookies in a range of heart shapes, and then quickly ice them with dots.  Note:  every cookie was decorated with a #2 piping tip. This pink milk glass platter shows the the variety of shapes and designs I am referring to. Here's a sampling of the cookie cutters I ended up using for this project.   If you don't own a set of these French de Buyer heart cookie cutters, I highly recommend them.  I like the range of sizes they come in, the fact that they're deep and made of strong plastic.  Easy to maintain, the cutters get used every si...