Valentine's Day Butter Cookies with Red Royal Icing (GF)

I've made Valentine's Day cookies several times with similar results. All were tasty. My first version was tasty but the red icing well, was a weird pinkish orange hue. Creating deep reds is perplexing. Do you add a whole bottle of fakey "no taste" food colouring? Often this renders the tongues bright red of the people who ingested your cookies. Or do you add a dab and hope that it'll do?  My second version was made with white chocolate but in the end the same washed out colours resulted.

BEST EVER QUINOA CHOCOLATE CUPCAKES FOR VALENTINE'S DAY!

Best Ever Quinoa Chocolate Cupcakes...Gluten Free!

VALENTINE’S DAY CUPCAKES

Chocolate Cupcake decorated with Pink Vanilla Buttercream and a Marshmallow Heart

There’s nothing like my daughter’s class Valentine’s day party to get me inspired to bake cupcakes again.  Yes, it’s been a long time.  I’ve made so many other things other than cupcakes.   This isn’t to say cake hasn’t been on my brain!  Let’s get real now!

RED VELVET VALENTINE'S DAY CUPCAKES

What better for a kiddies' Valentine's day party than Red Velvet cupcakes? I will forego the traditional cream cheese frosting for a classic buttercream because this will hold up better and pipes beautifully. I wanted huge swirls of buttercream and little candy heart sprinkles.

I think this will go over well with the kindergarteners because it has all the elements of fun food: it's tiny, sweet, buttery, full of sprinkles and hand-held! Bib took a mini cupcake and scraped off all the frosting (as usual); leaving behind the cake. She didn't even taste the cake; nor was she interested in tasting it. Bebe ate the whole thing and nodded approvingly.

The recipe for Red Velvet cupcakes makes 24 regular cupcakes, but I wanted mini ones for the kids so I made a batch of 24 mini cupcakes and the rest of the batter filled up the remaining 14 regular-sized cupcake molds for the adults.

The batter mixes up easily and yes indeed, it uses a full 2 ounces (a huge bottle) of red food colouring. The resulting batter looks quite ghastly, but after it bakes, it deepens into a deep red.

Red Velvet Cupcakes
from The Artful Cupcake, by Marcianne Miller
4 oz (1 stick) unsalted butter or shortening, room temperature (I used butter, of course!)
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
2 oz red food colouring
2 T unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 t salt
1 cup buttermilk
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 t vanilla extract
1 T distilled white vinegar
1 T baking soda

1. Preheat oven to 350F and prepare the muffin pans with shortening or nonstick spray. Bake without paper cups to get smoother sides. [I used paper liners]
2. Cream together the butter/shortening and sugar until well blended and light and fluffy
3. Add the eggs, one at a time, and blend well after each addition
4. Make a paste with the food colouring and cocoa. Add the paste to the butter/shortening mixture and blend thoroughly.
5. Add the salt and buttermilk to the mixture
6. Add the flour, vanilla, vinegar and baking soda in that order, mixing after each addition
7. Pour the batter into the pans, filling at least halfway. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
8. Remove and turn out onto a wire rack to cool.

I frosted with a 1m Wilton tip using a double batch of this classic buttercream recipe.

WHITE CHOCOLATE VALENTINE'S SUGAR COOKIES

White Chocolate Valentine's Day Cookies

Last year I made Valentine's Day cookies and iced them with royal icing. Though royal icing is easy to work with, it's not my favourite for flavour or texture.
unlike me, you should remember not to stack these cookies as the white chocolate marks up easily...see all the smudges?

I love chocolate and decided to try my hand at decorating some sugar cookies with tinted white chocolate. I know that chocolate is temperamental and adding water to it is asking for disaster, so I used powdered food colouring. I added red powdered colour and of course it never really turned a deep red. I didn't really care though.

when in doubt, just drizzle with way more white chocolate! you can't go wrong

I used parchment cones to pipe and flood the cookies. Initially, everything was going fine...I melted the white chocolate and stirred it until it was completely smooth. I poured the tinted white chocolate into the cones...and then I realized how runny it really was. The chocolate dripped out the tiny point of the cones almost immediately. I worked quickly and realized that piping wasn't going to be so easy after all.

see all the bumps from the flooding? these are easily remedied by hiding them with more drizzled white chocolate ;P

I did my best at outlining and then flooding the hearts. The chocolate didn't really flatten out completely and looked a tad bumpy but I didn't want to tempt fate and start messing with it so I left it. I let it dry and then decided I wanted to outline with just plain white chocolate (no tint) and realized I had to come up with a simple design because the chocolate was way runnier than royal icing. I piped some lacy dots; just touching around the edges of the hearts and it seemed okay.

The flavour of these white chocolate cookies totally rocks compared to royal icing cookies.

Check out here the MS sugar cookie recipe I used or if you prefer, a totally decadent Vanilla Bean Butter cookie. I used Callebaut White Chocolate for decorating. Only the best for my sweetie pies: Bebe and Bib thought they were delicious!

DOTTY FOR YOU: VALENTINE'S DAY COOKIES

"dotty for you" valentine's day butter cookies

For Valentine's Day, I wanted to bake Bebe and Bib some cookies.

the white royal icing dots are so easy to pipe (but a little bit time-consuming)

Fortuitously, I remembered that I had a slab of butter cookie dough left over from Christmas Baking in the freezer. I had even rolled it out and saved it between parchment and plastic wrap.

I whipped up a simple royal icing using meringue powder and confectioners' sugar and rummaged around for my food colouring. I found the powdered stuff and put a pinch into the mixer. The colour was kind of icky and so I kept adding pinches of the food colouring but it never did achieve the nice baby pink colour I had intended. Instead, I had an orangey-pink hue.

I did my best to flood the cookies with the icing and decided it was best to disguise the hideous shade of pink with some white royal icing. The quickest and least artistically offensive design I came up with were these dots.

a plate full of love & kisses

It's not too late to bake some sweets for your sweetie! Click here and here for good butter cookie recipes.