Red Velvet Cookies for Valentines Day

 

A cigarette that bears a lipstick’s traces

An airline ticket to romantic places

And still my heart has wings

These foolish things remind me of you.

                          Holt Marvel, These Foolish Things

Happy Valentines Day readers! It is a day that divides the crowds, but I like it, even though I don’t have a Valentine - I prefer instead to use the day to celebrate those dear and near to me in a non-romantic sense.

It is also Transfiguration Sunday in the Lutheran Church, being the last Sunday before Ash Wednesday. I think that is rather fitting for Valentines Day, as love for another transforms them in our eyes. To quote the finale song of Les Miserables, to love another person is to see the face of God.

One of the best things about Valentines Day is the opportunity to bake and decorate something fun. I made cookies again, but this year they are red velvet rollout cookies. It was  a challenge to find a recipe I could make, as the most popular recipe contained buttermilk powder, which I did not have.

I finally landed on a recipe from Baking A Moment, containing cream cheese instead of buttermilk powder for that red velvet tang. I used a quarter of the recipe - here are my cookies before being decorated:

To make these cookies, you will need:

225g butter

115g cream cheese

1 cup sugar

1 egg yolk

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 tablespoon red liquid food colouring

3 cups plain flour

1/4 cup cornflour

1/4 cup cocoa powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius and line baking sheets with baking paper.

Put the butter, cream cheese and sugar into the bowl of a stand mixer and beat together until smooth.

Beat in the egg yolk, vanilla and food colouring.

Add the flour, sifted cocoa, cornflour and salt and mix until just combined.

Turn the dough out onto a piece of baking paper and press it together into a flat disc. Put another sheet of baking paper on top, and roll out the dough to a thickness of roughly 3/16”. 

Remove the top piece of paper and cut the dough into whatever shapes you like, and place each shape onto the lined baking trays. (If, like me, you find the dough is sticking to the paper, put the rolled out dough into the fridge to chill for 10 minutes or so.)

Put each sheet of cookies into the oven and bake for ~ 15 minutes or until the cookies are firm at the edges but still a little soft in the centre.  Cool the cookies on the baking sheets.

Now the fun part - decorating your cookies!  I brushed the top of each cookie lightly with water and stuck a thinly rolled piece of fondant cut into a matching shape on top of each cookie. I then used stencils to air-brush designs on top of the cookies. I used this Cookie Countess cartoon heart stencil:

and this Berry Sweet lips stencil:

They are a little bit blurred, but I think that’s part of the charm, especially for the lips - it looks a little like smeared lipstick.

Enjoy your Valentines Day!