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I’ve never been into valentines day a huge amount if I’m honest. I’ve always seen it as another way we are made to spend money. Love should be shown all year round, not just one day of the year right?
Since being at home with my children though, I have wanted them to know that you don’t always have to buy your gifts, you can make or bake them instead.
Baking and cooking is a great way to form positive relationships with food and encourage your little ones to enjoy cooking from a young age. It’s also great for a non-screen time activity you can all do together.
For valentines day, we decided to make some valentines cookies. I let Tyler loose with the decorating after he had helped me with the mixing. Which he absolutely LOVED. Honestly….so did I!
Picking up the decorations can help to develop fine motor skills as well as coordination in youngsters. Being able to work on and build those sorts of skills while having fun is always good because they don’t even realise there is a slight ulterior motive to being let loose with the sprinkles.
A Box of Valentines Day Cookies makes a thoughtful home-baked gift.
I used a standard cookie recipe, but you can always customise your cookie recipe with fruit instead of chocolate if you want to. You could make double chocolate cookies as well! These are both really easy to do.
Use the same weight of fruit as chocolate chips.
If you use 2tbsp of cocoa powder (not hot chocolate mix!) take 2tbsp flour out
This recipe makes 16 cookies and only takes about 30 minutes to make. Including cooking time!
I decided to make different sized cookies, so my recipe made less than 16 and I adjusted the cooking time accordingly. If you want to make and. bake the cookies quickly so that your youngsters have something to decorate. I suggest doing it on your own as 30 minutes is optimistic with a 2-year-old helping.
Ingredients for Valentines Day Cookies
75g softened butter
80g soft light brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
125g Self-raising flour
1 medium egg
50g milk chocolate chips
50g Plain chocolate chips
Decorating
Heart-shaped cookie cutter (I bought this great value set!)
Icing sugar
pink food colouring
Assorted sprinkles and decorations
Method
You need to set the oven to 190 degrees/ 375 Fahrenheit/ Gas mark 5 and place baking parchment on a large baking tray.
Beat the sugar and butter together until they are soft and creamy.
Next, add the vanilla extract and egg then beat together until the egg is fully mixed in.
Fold in the flour and the chocolate chips until you have a soft and sticky dough.
An easy way to make sure you have 16 cookies that are the same size is by doing this.
Divide the dough into 2. Then divide the two halves in half again.
Once you have 4 even sections of dough. Divide each of those sections into 4.
Roll these into 16 balls. (I cooked mine in two batches)
Place onto the lined baking tray with a gap between each one for the balls to form discs.
Bake in your pre-heated oven for 8-10 minutes or until they are golden brown and a bit gooey in the middle still.
Optional: As soon as you have taken them out the oven, take your heart-shaped cookie cutter and press it into the soft cookies. DO NOT attempt to take them off the tray yet, as they will be too soft and break.
Once the cookies have cooled for 5 minutes, transfer to a wire rack and allow them to fully cool before decorating.
Related: Halloween Food Idea | Easy To Make Monsters
Decorating
Mix 1 or two drops of food colouring into the icing sugar and mix thoroughly until it’s a thick paste. From there add in a few drops of water at a time and stir thoroughly. This makes sure that you don’t add to much water.
You want a drizzling, NOT pouring consistency. Add more food colouring if you want a more vibrant pink.
Keep the cookies on the wire rack and place the baking tray underneath. This helps to catch spills and drips. Or give your little helper a tray lined with baking parchment.
Now hand the reins over to your kids and let them decorate to their heart’s content! I’m letting Tyler decorate half so that I can decorate the other half.
Drizzle the icing over the centre of the cooled cookies. This will allow for the icing to spread naturally.
Sprinkle over the decorations as you wish before the icing sets.
Leave on the wire rack until the icing has set and store in an airtight container for up to 4 days.
Or package some up in a box and some ribbon as the perfect home-baked valentines day cookie.
We both loved baking and decorating these cookies. It’s something we can both do together that is a little bit different to what we usually get to do.
I Can’t wait to see what you create, share them with me in the comments below.
It would also be great if you could share this post for me, thank you!