Valentine Cookie Messages

Valentine's Day is just around the corner, and I have started making some Valentine recipes. This post is just the start of what will be, no doubt, at least a few days of valentine foods. I really like Valentine's Day, and it is easy to make Valentine's recipes, especially desserts, since chocolate and Valentine's Day go hand-in-hand, and pretty much any chocolate creation can be formed into a heart shape somehow. Today I made heart shaped chocolate cookies. The cookie recipe is actually the recipe I use for chocolate whoopie pies (see June 22nd, 2012), so the cookies are soft and cake-like. I simply mixed up the dough, then dropped it by ice cream scoops into the center of a heart shaped cookies cutter, and used a spoon to spread it out. This goes much better if the cookie cutter is lightly greased between every few cookie. As you can see, not every cookie turned out to be a perfect heart shape, but that's okay. Then I baked the cookies, let them cool, and whipped up a simple batch of pink icing. Then I piped on some messages or shapes on the cookies. I didn't even use a piping bag, just a plastic sandwich bag with the end snipped off. I basically took the idea of those little candy hearts that always come out around Valentine's Day, and wrote messages like those, such as Be Mine, I Love You, Hug Me, You're Sweet, XOXO, etc. Then I piped some hearts on some and some arrows on the others. This was actually quite quick to do and very fun!