Bring on the love this Valentine’s Day with sweet and delicious cookies for everyone to enjoy! Amber Spiegel, the incredibly talented artist and baker behind Sweet Ambs collaborated with us on creating Chocolate and Buttercream Heart-Shaped Cookies that we simply can’t get enough of! Watch this full tutorial to learn how to decorate the cookies once your buttercream frosting has been made.
The cookies are easy-to-make, but frosting them is where the real fun comes in!
Chocolate and Buttercream Heart-Shaped Cookies
Supplies
- 3-inch heart cookie cutter
- 4 – 12 inch decorating bags with couplers
- Scribe tool or toothpick
- 4 decorating tip 3
- 4 decorating tip 16
- 1 decorating tip 8
- Pink food coloring
- Bag ties or rubber bands
- 4 small bowls for mixing frosting colors
- Small offset spatula
- Wax paper wrapped cake board or baking sheet
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- Sprinkle tweezers (optional)
Chocolate Heart Cookie Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
- 1/2 cup cocoa powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 stick (1/2 cup) butter, softened
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 large egg, room temperature
- 1 tablespoon milk
Buttercream Frosting Ingredients
- 1 1/2 sticks butter, softened
- 3 cups confectioners sugar
- 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 1/2 tablespoons milk
- Pink food coloring
- Granulated sugar
Preparation
- Cream the softened butter and sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy.
- Stop the mixer and scrape the bowl.
- Add the egg and vanilla and continue to mix on medium speed until combined.
- Add the flour, baking soda, and salt.
- Mix on low speed until the dough starts to pull away from the sides, stopping once to scrape the bowl.
- Wrap the dough and refrigerate it for at least 1 hour. (The dough can be refrigerated for up to 3 days or frozen for up to 3 months.)
- Place the dough onto a lightly floured surface and roll it to about 1/4 inch thick. Refrigerate the sheet for 15 to 30 minutes.
- Cut the cookies using heart-shaped cookie cutter and place them onto a parchment-lined baking sheet.
- Bake the cookies at 350 F for 9 to 10 minutes or until the edges are light golden brown.
- To make the buttercream frosting, beat the softened butter on medium speed until smooth.
- Add the powdered sugar, vanilla, and milk and mix on low speed until combined.
- Stop the mixer and scrape the bowl.
- Beat the frosting on high speed until it is light and fluffy.
Decorating Instructions
- Separate the buttercream into 4 small bowls. Add 1 drop of pink food coloring to one of the bowls, 2 drops of pink food coloring to another bowl, and 3 drops of food coloring to another bowl. Take a small scoop of the darkest shade of pink frosting and add it to the last bowl to create the lightest shade of the group.
- Fit 4 decorating bags with couplers and a decorating tip 16. Fill the bags with the buttercream. Secure the tops of the bags with bag ties or rubber bands to prevent the icing from spilling out as you decorate the cookies.
- Use a scribe tool or toothpick to draw vertical lines on the cookies, separating them into 4 equal sections. Pipe a small amount of each color frosting onto the heart cookies from darkest to lightest. Use an offset spatula to spread and blend the frosting.
- Pipe a vertical double shell in each section of the cookie, from darkest to lightest.
- Switch the decorating tips on all of the bags to a tip 3.
- Pipe a vertical bead in between each double shell, from darkest to lightest. Set the cookies aside.
- Switch the decorating tip on the darkest shade of pink to a tip 8. Pipe about 60 dots (for 1 dozen cookies) on a piece of wax paper wrapped around a cake board or sheet tray. Move the tip 8 to the decorating bag with the next lightest shade of frosting and pipe about 60 more dots. Continue this with the last two shades of pink frosting.
- Cover the dots with granulated sugar and shake off the excess. Transfer the board to the freezer until the dots are firm.
- Remove the dots from the wax paper using a scribe tool, toothpick, or offset spatula.
- Pipe small dots of buttercream frosting around the edge of the cookies to hold the sugar-coated dots in place. Use sprinkle tweezers or your fingers to place the dots onto the cookies. You may need to put the sugar-coated buttercream dots back into the freezer to firm up if they become soft while you are working.