Happy Valentines Day!

We wish all of you a very happy Valentines day. Today is not just for couples but for everyone out there as I read in Anni Chic’s column in 24 hours Vancouver Feb 13th pg 22.
In Finland the day is called “Day of Friendship”, so don’t feel sad if you are not in a relationship, be happy that you have friends!

Regardless of your status you are entitled to enjoy some sweet treats. So therefore I will share this fast and easy to make sugar cookies recipe and give you some tips for easy and fun decorations with icing.

200 g (2 cups) flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
120 g (1/2 cup) butter
190 g (1 cup) sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla sugar

Cream together butter and sugar in a bowl, when it has turned white and more fluffy add in the egg and mix again.
Mix together all the dry ingredients and add into the butter mixture one spoonful at the time.
Mix on slow speed till it is just mixed. Take it out of the bowl and knead gently till you have a soft but firm ball of dough. Put it in a sealed container and place in the fridge for minimum 1 hour.

Take the dough out and let it warm up for about 10 min before you start rolling it out.
Roll out the dough on a flour covered table till about 2-3 mm (0.1 inch) thick.
If you have a heart shaped mold you can use that to cut out the shapes of the cookies or you can cut them out with the open end of a glass or simply cut it with a knife. The cookies can be any shape you like, I just made mine heart shaped today because of Valentines.

Place all the cookies on an oven pan covered with parchment paper and place the pan in the freezer for 15 min.

Heat up the oven to 160 C (325 F).
Take the cookies out from the freezer and directly into the oven where you bake them for 10-15 min.
Keep an eye on them, you want a slightly brown edge on each cookie.
Take them out and let cool completely.

Decoration tips!

I make icing of icing sugar and water + colour.
When making cookies or anything else that can be decorated I will do just that. I love to decorate and be creative so for these cookies I made 5 different colours of icing and put each colour in a ziplock bag and cut a tiny, very little hole in one corner. Always cut the hole smaller than you think, because you can cut it bigger anytime if you feel the icing is not coming out well enough.

Hearts on cookies:
To make small hearts on the cookies I pick 2 colours, one for the background and one for the hearts.
I cover the cookie with the background colour and spread it out nicely, then I add small dots of the 2nd colour on top of the background colour. It will only take a few seconds for the heart colour to sink into the background colour, so now it looks like just one layer of icing.
I then take a toothpick and start tracing above one of the dots, through the dot and past the dot. This will create the heart shape.
Now repeat that on all the dots and you will soon have a cookie covered in beautiful hearts.

Stripes with a twist:
Stripes on cookies sound so simple, and it is!
Simply pick the colours you want to use, minimum 2 for it to have an effect.
Draw the stripes on the cookie so the whole cookie is covered. Then take your toothpick and start tracing from one side at a 90 degree angle to the stripes. Trace all the way through to the other side and switch direction for the second tracing. Keep going till you have created the pattern you want.

There are many more techniques to decorate cookies, so be creative and develop your own style. I would love to hear from you if you have any cool techniques you want to share.

Now let the cookies dry for about an hour or more and serve for your friends or partner and have a very “hyggelig” time together on Valentines Day!

Ayoe

-Enjoy!

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