Valentine's Day Sugar Cookies (Two Designs)

     This year for Valentine's Day, Jo's Little Kitchen (my home bakery) is selling goodie boxes! As I was deciding what to put in my goodie boxes, I thought that a sugar cookie was a necessity. However, I can't just put any old sugar cookie in the boxes! I knew I already had a lot of fun flavors going on so I wasn't going to add another. So, I had to figure out how to make these fun visually. The only problem was I am not very good at piping or icing. If any of you saw my gingerbread men from this Christmas season, you'd know what I mean. Thats when I remembered all of the videos I saw last winter of people making marbled   red and green Christmas cookies. It looked as easy as can be so I got going making my sugar cookies with a colorful twist. 

    To start just about any cookie recipe I beat together softened butter and sugar until it is light and well combined. I then continued my simple sugar cookie recipe by adding my salt, egg, and vanilla and beating again. Now comes the fun part... I was trying to decide how many colors to include in my marble when I had the idea to make a gingham pattern! Once I finish with the gingham pattern cookies I can use the leftovers to make the marble cookies like originally planned. This way, I get two patterns for the "price" of one! 

    To make the gingham pattern I spit my dough into three parts, making sure one part was bigger than the other two. I used a few drops of red food dye in the biggest lump, and kneaded it, to make light pink dough. I kneaded some red and a tish of blue food color in one of the other balls of dough to make a dark pink/maroon color. The last ball I left undyed. I took my three balls of colored cookie dough and used a rolling pin to make thick rectangles of dough. If I had to guess, they were about 1/4-1/2 inches thick each. I made sure each rectangle was the same thickness and legnth, but the light pink rectangle will be a little 

wider.

    Once each slab was the size I wanted I cut strips off of my rectangles one at a time as needed for my pattern. On the bottom I started of by using a light pink strip, then a dark pink, light pink, dark pink, and last light pink. Each row will have five strips. On the second layer I started with an undyed strip of dough on top of the light pink, light pink next to that, on top of the dark pink, then undyed, light pink, and lastly undyed. For my third layer I copied my first with the alternating light and dark pink. I continued with a copy of the second layer, then finished with a copy of the first layer. You may notice that my images do not have that last row, I ran out of light pink so I was unable to really complete the pattern. Don't worry if this happens for you! It did not affect my end pattern. You should finish with five rows and five columns. 

    When my pattern was finished, I carefully squished my log together so that each strip stuck together. I did this by lightly squishing my log down, then turning it onto the next side, then squishing, so I maintained my square-ish shape. This is when the magic happens, I took a very sharp knife and carefully cut off of the end of my log. the cross section that was revealed was gorgeous! I continued down my log, making cookie thick slices along the way.

    I then took each little slice and cut out a heart shape. However, there are a few other ways you can shape your cookie. You could use your rolling pin to roll your slice flatter and make it slightly bigger and use a cookie cutter to shape it, or you can just leave it square shaped. I wanted to end up with thick little cookies so I did not roll out my slices at all, I just cut my heart shapes right out of the smaller squares. 

    I baked my little cookies at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 8 minutes. The first time I tried these though, I definitely baked them for a little too long. These cookies don't really change color so trust me with the bake time and don't extend it unless you are making bigger cookies. With this recipe, you shouldn't need to ever bake them for longer than ten minutes. 

    Now, I am sure you are wondering what in the world I did with all the excess dough! I smushed it all into a ball and rolled it out flat. This part can be just a little hard because you need to be very careful not to overwork the dough so that your cookies don't turn out tough and the color don't mix up too much. I cut hearts out of this marbled dough too but these cookies were a bit bigger and thinner so they needed about nine minutes of bake time. 

    Both of these heart cookies ended up being so freaking cute! However, if I am being totally honest, I don't know if I'll ever make the gingham cookies again. They were a LOT of effort for the amount I ended up getting, and the complex shape and separate colors make it very easy to accidentally overwork the dough. On the other hand though, the marbled cookies were SO EASY and I will be making them over and over again!

How did this recipe work for you? Leave me a comment!