Today I’m sharing my Valentine’s Day roll cookie recipe and making Valentine’s Day cookie care packages to enjoy and to share.
Are you ready to spread some love on Valentine’s Day?
Today I’m making my favorite old fashioned roll cookies with icing.
And creating Valentine’s Day care packages to enjoy and to share with family and friends.
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Whether you’re hosting a Valentine’s Day cookie decorating party, making care packages, or making a delicious treat for you and your family to enjoy, my traditional roll cookie recipe and icing has you covered.
Traditional roll cookies are easy and fun to make and perfect for Valentine’s Day gifting.
“Aunties and grandmother’s who roll cookies for and with children are scare these days.”
So says a page torn from my mom’s The Joy of Cooking, circa 1960’s.
Have no fear, this auntie is on the job!
The recipe ~
Valentine's Day Roll Cookies with Decorative Icing
Ingredients
Roll Cookies
- 1/2 cup Sugar
- 1/2 cup Butter, room temperature
- 2 Eggs
- 2-1/2 cups All-Purpose Flour
- 2 tsp Double-Acting Baking Powder
- 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
Decorative Icing
- 4 Egg Whites
- 1/2 tsp Cream of Tartar
- 1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract or Lemon Extract I use lemon extract.
- 5 cups Powdered Sugar, sifted
Instructions
Roll Cookies
- Using standing mixer, cream together sugar and butter.
- Mix in eggs, one at a time.
- Add flour, baking soda and vanilla (or lemon extract) and continuing mixing until dough forms.
- Roll dough into ball and cover with plastic wrap.
- Refrigerate at least 3 hours. Or overnight.
- When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350.
- Prepare cookie sheets by greasing or lining with Silpats or parchment sheets.
- Divide chilled dough into 2-4 smaller pieces and roll out one at a time using enough flour so dough won't stick (but not too much).
- Roll to desired thickness. Maybe 1/8" ... these cookies with rise up and become thicker with baking.
- Cut dough with cookie cutter and place onto prepared cookie sheets.
- Repeat process, incorporating
- Bake each sheet of cookies for 11 minutes. Don't let the bottoms brown.
- Remove from oven and cool for 5 minutes, then move cookies to cooling racks.
Decorative Icing
- Beat egg whites until frothy.
- Gradually add sifted sugar and continue beating until frosting is consistency you desire.
- Divide icing into smaller bowls and add food colorings.
- Frost away ... then let cookies sit until completely dried. They are generally best eaten the next day, after frosting continues setting overnight. Cover lightly to keep fresh. To freeze, place in single layer on cookie sheet into freezer for a couple of hours, then move to small containers. To defrost, remove from freezer and place on single layer.
Let’s Decorate ~
After the cookies are baked and completely cooled, it’s time to decorate. Piping and flooding a cookie is way beyond my ability so I came up with a more random and abstract way to decorating. First, using a regular or small offset spatula, ice the entire cookie. Then, using bamboo skewers dipped into another color icing, create a zig zig pattern by moving the skewer back and forth over the cookie.
Creating Care Packages ~
Almost as fun as decorating the cookies is finding cure ways to packed them as gifts. Who doesn’t enjoying finding a cute cookie care package on their doorstep or in the mail? I used small bakery-style window boxes and filled them with pink crinkle paper. The largest cookie cutter in this set made cookies perfectly sized for the boxes.
For my local niece and nearby friends, I placed the cookies right on top of the pink confetti, tied the boxes with Valentine themed ribbon and dropped them on their doorsteps. For my farther away nieces, I put the cookies into cellophane bags before placing them in the boxes, wrapping with pretty ribbon and packing to ship.
I made larger cookies with this cookie cutter and packaged them on these cute red heart appetizer plates. I wrapped them with cellophane paper and red and white ribbon.
A few tips:
- Depending on the size of your cookie cutter, make at least two batches of dough. One batch yields only 18-20 medium sized hearts.
- The icing takes a long time to dry and fully set. At least 12 hours, preferably overnight.
- If you’re hosting a cookie decorating party, asks guests to bring cookie sheets to transport their cookies home.
- Here’s the ideal timeline for the entire process: make dough and chill overnight; roll and bake in the morning; decorate in the afternoon; package and deliver/ship (or eat) the next day.
- If you’re shipping cookies and want them to stay fresh, overnight shipping is ideal. But … big BUT … overnight shipping (any kind of shipping) is outrageously expensive and I nearly passed out at the UPS Store counter. A lot has changed since I used my babysitting money to mail cookies, packed in a shoe box, to my high school sweetheart at the Air Force Academy. Anyhoo, you can probably get a decent pair of shoes for what shipping is likely to cost. Be warned.
- As tempting as it may be, try to hold off sampling your cookies until the icing is fully set. For some reason they just don’t taste their best until completely dry.
Shop the post ~
So there you have it.
Valentine’s Day roll cookie care packages to enjoy and to share!
For more Valentine inspiration you may enjoy my Valentine’s Day Tea Party Ideas and Decadent Chocolate Pot de Creme.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
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