Hearts Hearts Hearts and a CONTEST!

Valentine’s Day is tomorrow! (And it’s also Knitting Daughter’s birthday – best Valentine ever!) In honor of the Day of Love, I’m sharing two of my favorite heart cookie recipes, in case you’re in the mood to bake a few for your sweetheart.

Dipped Valentine Butter Cookies

1 1/2 cups of unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. coarse salt
3 cups of flour

For dipping:
semi-sweet chocolate chips (1-2 packs) and/or other varieties of melting chocolate.

Beat butter until fluffy. Add in powdered sugar and mix well. Add eggs, beating after each addition. Mix salt with flour and then slowly add to the egg/butter/sugar mixture. Beat just until mixed.

Roll out and cut into shapes. Bake at 350 degrees for 12 minutes. (Note – cookies don’t expand in size, so you can put a lot on each baking sheet.) Let cool.

For dipping – melt semi-sweet chocolate and dip half of the cookie into the chocolate. Lay on wire racks and let harden in the refrigerator for 20 minutes. Another option – melt white melting chocolate, dip half the cookie, and sprinkle red sugar sprinkles on top. (This would be a good option if, for example, you poured half the bag of chocolate chips into the melting pot and put the rest of the bag on the counter. Then let’s say that you actually had it too close to the edge and it fell off, dumping the rest of the chips on the floor, rendering them unusable? But, you remember that you have 2 bags of white chocolate melting chips from the Oreo truffles you made at Christmas. So you dip the rest of the cookies in white chocolate, sprinkle it with red to make it look Valentine-y, and then pretend that you totally did this on purpose. Totally hypothetically.)

Julia’s Sugar Cookies 

2 sticks margarine (1 cup)
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
4 Tbl. milk
2 tsp. vanilla
4 cups flour
4 tsp. baking powder
Frosting Glaze

Beat together margarine and sugar. Add eggs, milk and vanilla until light and fluffy. Stir in flour and baking powder and mix well. Chill in plastic wrap for 4 hours (or overnight is even better).

Roll out on well-floured surface. Cut and bake on lightly greased cookie sheet (or baking stone.) 375 degrees for 9 minutes. Cool and frost.

Frosting Glaze:

2 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
food coloring
milk to desired consistency

Let glaze set until dry.

Would you like to win something Valentine-y? We have a skein of Wollmeise Pure in Baba Jaga (beautiful reds and blacks), a skein of Wollmeise Pure in Blue Bell (pretty blues and purples, just in case there are some people out there who don’t like red so much) and a Loopy Short Stack (an 8 Fat Quarter set) from Moda’s Surrounded by Love collection. Just tell us below which one you’d like to win (yes, you have to choose), and we’ll draw three names next week!

Sheri hopingyouallhaveaLOVE-lyweekend