Valentine's Day

Heart shaped cookies flooded and decorated
with icing and airbrushed for shimmer.

Valentine's Day is next week and it's a busy week for bakeries all around the world! Cupcakes, layer cakes, heart shaped cookies will all take center stage! Those of you new to cake decorating should think about practicing your new found skills on sugar cookies. You can bake up some heart shaped sugar cookies and outline them with a border of shells, zigzags or dots. Add a little luster dust from cupid and you've got a sweet treat for your Valentine! You can even write cute messages on them!

Champagne Sugar Cookies

For super easy decorating, bake up your sugar cookies and make up a batch of buttercream icing with your favorite Valentine's Day flavoring. Take your 1M tip, load you pastry bag up with your buttercream (but remember not to over fill like I showed you in class) and start at the middle dip of your heart and move your bag around the edge of the cookie. When you get to the other side of the dip in the heart move your tip past the dip and end with a nice star in the middle of your cookie. Take some Valentine's Day inspired Wilton sanding sugar and sprinkle on your cookie. So cute!

Rolled Fondant Sugar Cook

For those of you that have taken my gumpaste & fondant class you too can bake up some heart shaped sugar cookies, ice them in a delicious buttercream icing ( I love pink champagne icing for Valentines). Then roll out some red or pink fondant, cut out hearts with the same cutter you used for the cookie dough and place the fondant hearts on top of your iced cookies. You can also use the Wilton Impression mats on your fondant prior to cutting out your hearts for some beautiful textured hearts! Or you can take one of the wheel rollers and roll a quilted pattern on the fondant and embellish with Wilton edible pearls. They are just beautiful with the pearls.

Lastly for those you looking for CAKE, whip up your favorite chocolate cake recipe or fudge cake recipe and bake in a round 8 inch pan. Followed by a recipe of strawberry buttercream (use fresh strawberries or a really good strawberry preserve). Thin some of it out to icing your cake, then using the 1M tip, border the top and bottom with either shells or rosettes. If you are feeling ambitious, prior to adding your borders you can shave a good quality chocolate and add it to the sides. Add your borders and some chocolate shavings on top for a beautiful presentation.

Strawberry Chocolate Fudge Cake, perfect
for Valentine's Day!

Here is a simple sugar cookie recipe for your Valentine's Day cookies!


Courtesy of Wilton:

Ingredients:

• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon no-color almond extract
• 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt

Makes:

Makes about 3 dozen 3-in. cookies.

Instructions:

Step 1

Preheat oven to 350ºF.

Step 2

In large bowl, beat butter and sugar with electric mixer until light and fluffy. Beat in egg and extracts. Mix flour, baking powder and salt; add to butter mixture 1 cup at a time, mixing after each addition. Do not chill dough. Divide dough into 2 balls.

Step 3

On floured surface, roll each ball into a circle approximately 12 in. diameter x 1/8 in. thick. Dip cookie cutter in flour before each use. Bake cookies on ungreased cookie sheet 8-11 minutes or until cookies are lightly browned.

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Happy caking!

❤❤Michele❤❤