Chocolate Heart Cookies

Chocolate Heart Cookies

Chocolate Heart Cookies

For Valentine's Day, I baked Chocolate Heart Cookies for hubby and me. This recipe is the first chocolate sugar cookie recipe I have made. I searched on the web for months before deciding on Sweetopia's recipe. The rich chocolate taste of the cookie and chewy texture was delightful. The chocolate dough was easy to work using rolling pin technique to roll out the dough in between two sheets of parchment paper. I used 4 different heart cutters for my shapes and rolled a quarter of the dough at a time keeping the rest in the fridge to keep it cool. 

Large Chocolate Heart Cookies

Here is the link to the chocolate sugar cookie recipe: http://sweetopia.net/2013/12/chocolate-sugar-cookie-recipe-cut-out-cookies/.

Large and tiny Chocolate Heart Cookies

Chocolate Sugar Cookie

Ingredients

2 cups (4 sticks) Unsalted Butter softened

2 cups Sugar

2 Extra Large Eggs

3 teaspoons Pure Vanilla Extract

4 cups All-Purpose Flour

1 ½ cups Cocoa Powder

1 teaspoon Salt

Chocolate Heart Cookies all stacked up.

Directions

Sift Flour, Cocoa Powder and Salt in large bowl and combine with spatula; put aside.

Cut each stick of butter into 8 pieces.

Cream the Butter and Sugar together in a bowl of an electric mixer with paddle attachment on low to medium speed. Mix until incorporated, about 1 minute.

4 heart cutters I used

Different Wilton sprinkles, pearls, and sugars I used on the cookies

Scrape sides of bowl with spatula and mix again for 5-10 seconds more.

Add Eggs one at a time. Scrape down bowl with spatula and mix again for another 10 seconds.

Add Vanilla and mix for 1 minute.

Slowly add Flour mixture to bowl and mix on low speed for 1 minute. When Dough clumps around paddle attachment, it is ready.

Chocolate Hearts Cookies cooled and ready for decorating

Chocolate Heart Cookies close-up

Use rolling pin and roll out Dough between 2 pieces of parchment paper. Cover Dough with plastic wrap and cool in fridge for 1-2 hours.

Take one quarter of Dough, and roll out further and cut out desired heart shapes. Repeat rolling the Dough and cutting shapes until you have used it all.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

More close-ups of Chocolate Heart Cookies

Close-up of some of the Chocolate Heart cookies

Place cookie shapes on parchment lined baking sheet and space apart 2 inches.

Bake cookies for 8-12 minutes, or until center of cookie no longer looks wet. My cookies baked in 10 minutes.

Let cookies cool in baking sheet for 10 minutes and then transfer to wire rack to cool completely for 1 hour.

Let cookie sheets cool completely before you bake again. Repeat until you have baked all the cookies.

Once cookies have cooled, decorate as desired.

Chocolate Heart Cookies close-up pic

Royal Icing

Go to Joy of Baking: http://www.joyofbaking.com/RoyalIcing.html for the tutorial and recipe for royal icing with Egg Whites or Meringue Powder. I prefer the Egg Whites recipe and think the other is quite bland.

Use Royal Icing immediately or transfer to airtight containers as it hardens when exposed to air.

I tinted some of the icing to get pink and transferred to Squeeze Bottles using a funnel to prevent it from spilling. When you are not using the bottles keep the tip covered. If the icing hardens, spray a little bit of water and shake bottle well holding the tip with your finger.

Tiny and Large Chocolate Heart Cookies close-up

Do the borders first and let them dry completely 2-6 hours before filling the cookie. If you add sprinkles over the filled icing do it while it is wet.

Let the cookies dry overnight. I place them in cookie sheets and leave them uncovered for 4-5 hours and then cover with plastic wrap overnight to complete drying.

Enjoy!

-Sophia/Two Frys