Valentine's Day cookies

Yesterday morning, we headed up to the Sheffers to make Valentine's cookies. Mckenna and Karis had a great time "helping." We gave them each some dough to roll out and cut with heart-shaped cookie cutters. Of course, Jotham needed some dough too, but just sat and ate his! Selah wanted to help as well, but that was out of the question! She resorted to just wandering around.

We were really pleased how well the cookies turned out. The recipe was extremely easy, with only 5 ingredients for the cookies and just 3 for the icing! They tasted like yummy shortbread. I made both the dough and the icing the night before and put it in the fridge until morning. I included the recipe at the bottom if you ever need a good cutout cookie recipe.

concentrating hard!

Pounding and rolling....

...trying to make the dough flat.

Selah wandering around

Favorite Cutout Cookies

1 cup (1/2 lb.) butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
2 large egg yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1. In a bowl, with an electric mixer on medium speed, beat butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in egg yolks and vanilla. Stir or beat in flour until well blended.

2. Divide dough in half. Flatten each portion into a 1-inch-thick disk. On a lightly floured board, with a floured rolling pin, roll dough, a portion at a time, to 1/8 inch thick.

3. With floured cookie cutters, cut dough into shapes (if dough is too soft to handle, freeze briefly until firm).

4. With a wide spatula or your fingers, transfer cookies to buttered or cooking parchment-lined 12- by 15-inch baking sheets, spacing them about 1 inch apart. Gather scraps, pat into a ball, and repeat rolling and cutting.

5. Bake cookies in a 300° oven until golden, about 15 minutes; switch pan positions halfway through baking.

6. With a wide spatula, transfer cookies to racks to cool. If hot cookies start to break, slide a thin spatula under them to release; let stand on sheets to firm up, about 5 minutes, then transfer to racks to cool completely.

Powdered sugar icing:

In a bowl, stir 3 cups powdered sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla, and 1/4 cup water until smooth. Tint with food coloring as desired. Spread icing onto cool cookies with a metal spatula. Let stand until icing is firm, about 1 1/2 hours. Makes about 1 cup, enough to coat 1 recipe of Favorite Cutout Cookies.

Controlling consistency of icing is simple. If it's too thick, add a few drops of water; if it's too thin, gradually add more powdered sugar.

Makes about 45 2 1/2-inch cookies