I 
Valentine’s Day. And, I also love anything heart shaped. After Jack and I were married on Valentine’s Day, 33 years ago, I started collecting dishes, vases, table runners and anything else with hearts on it. I am now passing my love of hearts to grandson, Blake (21 months old), who recently added the word “heart” to his very limited vocabulary.
Over the weekend, Blake and I baked some heart-shaped cookies. I made two batches of sugar cookie dough and left one plain and dyed the other batch red, using paste food color. Then, I rolled out some white dough on my new non-stick pastry mat, which worked great. We cut hearts using a 3-inch heart cookie cutter and then used a smaller cutter to cut another heart inside the larger one. We did the same thing with the red dough.
For Blake, it was like making lots of little heart puzzles as he pushed small red hearts into larger white ones and the large red ones around small white heart-shaped dough cut-outs.
While Blake really liked helping me make the cookies, he liked eating them best of all!
Here is the dough recipe that I used. You can also use Betty Crocker sugar cookie mix to make the dough.
Season's Best Sugar Cookies
Cookies
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 cup butter or margarine, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1 egg
2 1/2 cups Gold Medal® all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
Red food coloring
1. In large bowl, beat 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar and the butter with electric mixer on medium speed, or mix with spoon. Stir in vanilla, 1/2 teaspoon almond extract and the egg. Stir in flour, baking soda and cream of tartar. Remove half of dough from bowl; cover and refrigerate about 2 hours or until firm. Add red food coloring to dough remaining in bowl to desired red color; cover and refrigerate about 2 hours or until firm.
2. Heat oven to 375°F. On lightly floured cloth-covered surface, roll half of dough at a time 1/8 inch thick. Cut into heart shapes (as I described above). On ungreased cookie sheets, place 2 inches apart.
3. Bake 6 to 7 minutes or until light brown. Remove from cookie sheet to cooling rack. Cool completely.
About 5 dozen cookies