I don't own a million cookie cutters. I hate that it seems like you have to have a closet full of cookie cutters to make great cookies. So, I thought I would try to make some different Valentine cookies only using only heart-shaped cutters.
These little "Bee Mine" cookies are what I came up with.
What You Need:
Nesting Heart Cookie Cutters
One Recipe
Sugar Cookie Dough
One Recipe
Royal Icing (Colored yellow, black and red)
Optional:
Piping Bags with Tips #1 or #2
Make the Cookies
The little bees are not hard to make. Use two of the
Nesting Heart Cookie Cutters. (I used the 3rd largest and the smallest.)
Roll out your cookie dough about 1/4" thick. For each large heart you cut out, you will need two small hearts. Because each large heart makes two bees. The small hearts are the wings.
Click the link for my sugar cookie dough recipe and tutorial.
Cut each large heart in half with a spatula. Each half will be one bee body.
Use the small heart cutter to make a small cut in the top (straight side) of the bee's body.
Place a small heart cookie cut-out in the trimmed area. You can press them slightly to make them adhere, but they pretty much stick together as long as they're placed right inside there closely. (I only had one break.)
Bake the cookies on a parchment-lined baking sheet at 350-degrees for 8-12 minutes, or just until they begin to turn golden. Allow the cookies to cool completely on the tray before removing them - to help protect from breakage.
Decorate the Cookies
To decorate, you want to make one batch of royal icing. Divide it into fourths. Keep one-fourth white. Color each remaining fourth yellow, red and black. I think you'll probably want both flooding consistency icing and icing to pipe outlines for these cookies. Some cookies you can skip the outlines, but I think it's best if you outline these guys.
Click the link for my recipe and tutorial on making royal icing and making the right consistency to flood your cookies.
I began by outlining the bee's body using tip #2. I would recommend turning the bee so that the wings are on the bottom when you outline the wings. I found the heart easier to do when it was upside down. I would outline one side, then the other, then the center "stripe." (This photo shows one that I did not do upside down. The upside down ones are smoother.)
Fill your colors in alternately. I usually do all of my outlines first... then move on to color #1 (in this case, yellow). Do all of my cookies with color #1, allowing it to dry a little... kind of like a little assembly line. I think it helps to allow for a little drying time between colors, and doing it this way, I don't feel like I lose time, because I never feel like there's enough time!
When you fill in all of the colors, you can go back to add accents.
...like the little eyeball and lips. You may want to let one half of your heart-wings dry a bit before filling in the second half. I only had one that lost its center line, but just in case.
For the hearts, I just filled them with red icing, let them dry a while, then wrote my messages with Tip #1 and black and yellow icing.
So... Will you Bee Mine? Happy Valentine's Day!
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They are so cute - what a lovely (and different) idea for valentines! Thanks for sharing the step by step.
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