heart-shaped cookies

A FESTIVAL OF HEARTS

sallybr2 Comments

HAPPY 23rd ANNIVERSARY TO ME AND MY FOREVER HUSBAND!

February is over but love is not. Truth is, I ran out of time to share all the heart-shaped cookies that materialized in my kitchen in the past few weeks, so sit back and get some ideas for romance in cookie shape. Below each design just a few details of how they were made.

THE CLASSICS

Red, pink and white. Simple. Wet-on-wet, some with a modern, playful twist.


GOLD

Flooded dark brown, stencil + air-brush gold. Or naked cookie painted with luster gold + vodka.


PINK AND GOLD

Flooded pink, with brush embroidery edge, stencil + air-brush gold and fondant detail.


SUPER PINK

Simple solid flooding, or minimal icing with piping consistency details.


GOLFER’S LOVE

Flooded in white, air-brushed in green and blue, fondant detail.


MARLYN’S BEACH LOVE

From a recent tutorial (click here to watch it), a few details of the design after the picture.

Sand detail first, covered with gold sanding sugar. Three colors of blue + brush embroidery and fondant detail.


AMBER’S BLUE HEARTS

Simple flooding in two colors, brush embroidery with lighter blue. For tutorial, click here.


For these cookies I used strawberry-flavored cookie dough, with a touch of red dye.

That’s all for now, friends! As you may have noticed, I tend to make heart-shaped cookies often, so you won’t have to wait until February to see more… I hope you found something to inspire you when that romantic mood sets in…


ONE YEAR AGO: Montreal Confections and PYOC

GINGERBREAD HEART COOKIES

sallybr4 Comments

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!

Today I share something special… my first tridimensional cookie set, following the guidelines of Tunde Dugantsi, from Tunde’s Creations (blog post with recipe and all details here). I’ve had these molds for a while, but lacked the courage to try them. I am so glad I did… I was quite nervous about the whole thing, from rolling the dough, shaping on the mold, and baking, but it all went quite smoothly. I am over the moon with my 3D-gingerbread babies!

Let me walk you through the process of making them…. The composite picture below shows the molds – they come with a set of 12 plus the perfect cutter to the the dough in the right dimension. Tunde shares her optimized recipe for the hearts, a classic gingerbread with plenty of cinnamon, ginger and cloves. To make un-molding easy, the molds are lightly sprayed with oil. I had no issues to bake them, a sharp pointed knife gently inserted on the side helped them release from the mold.

I was worried about the dimensions of the cookies after baking, but for the most part they paired quite nicely.

Once they are baked, the cookies are painted with a mixture of egg yolk, heavy cream, and red food dye.

After the painting dries, the real fun begins… Decorating the cookies with Royal icing. First I sketched a small heart shape in the center, and used that as a guideline for the design, piping with a PME tip 1.5. Once that is fully set, the two cookies can be joined together with Royal icing, adding some goodies inside (I used caramel-filled M&Ms), and a ribbon. A little more Royal icing piped as beads on the opening between the two cookies and the 3D cookie is done!

It was a very nice project that scared me to start with, but once I got the baking out of the way I felt a little more relaxed about it. The decorations made by Tunde are absolutely amazing, her skill with piping designs is unparalleled. I did what I could, simplifying things quite a bit.

The same mold can be used with different types of cookie dough. When you get the molds through Tunde’s etsy shop (click here to order), you will get a leaflet with a couple of interesting recipes in addition to the basic gingerbread. As I mentioned in my last post, love never goes out of fashion, so expect to see more 3D hearts as 2022 flies by…