Valentine's Day Cookies

My next foray into cookies came with Valentine's Day.  Since my hubby doesn't like sugar cookies, I decided to try something a little different.  I did these fabulous chocolate roll-out cookies from LilaLoa and since all I had on hand at the time was Hershey's Special Dark cocoa, I used that.  It made them much darker than the ones shown in the link above and I thought they were FANTASTIC. I will likely always use the special dark cocoa in this recipe.  I also tried the chocolate chip roll-out cookies I found on The Sweet Adventures of Sugarbelle for others in the Valentine's Day batches.

I did some for the hubs, of course, and I also did cookie packages for my mom, grandmother, mother-in-law and aunt.  After Christmas I always stock up on gift boxes when they are marked down and found that the rectangular lingerie sized boxes were perfect for sets for each person.  I didn't have any pink ribbon on hand, so I made the most fantastic bows from a roll of crepe paper streamers that I had.  I didn't get a pic of the boxes, but I'm not sure if I was more pleased with the packaging or the cookies!  lol

About a week and a half after Valentine's Day my MIL called and told me that she could just not bring herself to eat the cookies I'd given her except for one of the small ones and the back part of one of the large chocolate ones. I asked if she didn't like them. Her response was that they were too pretty to eat.  I told her that they wouldn't keep forever, so she needed to eat them.  She then told me she plans to polyurethane or shellac them and keep them in her china cabinet.  While that was certainly flattering, it absolutely had to be about the strangest thing I'd ever heard!

The day before V-Day, I met my mom and grandmother for lunch and brought them their cookies.  My grandmother had heard of my new found cookie obsession and dug out some of her old cutters for me. I have to include her cute pic here because she was decked out for our Valentine's luncheon (the other pic is the cutters she brought to me that day).

So what did I learn doing these?  If you look closely, you can see the difference in the way some of the cookies are flooded.  In the middle of this project, I began seeing this video from The Bearfoot Baker being re-posted in FB. It is a fantastic tutorial on flooding cookies and I was immediately able to put what I learned into practice. Also, I learned that getting the perfect red is HARD!!!  I started with Americolor Tulip Red and let it develop overnight and found that it still seemed orange-ish to me.  I added some pink, I added some cocoa powder and still didn't like what I was seeing.  So I went to the store and bought Americolor Super Red and added a little to it and let that develop and it turned into a gorgeous red.  However because I'd just sort of willy-nilly kept putting Tulip Red in at the beginning, it turned out a little darker than I would really have liked once the cookies dried, but at least it was then a true red!  Next time, I would just use a bit less coloring overall and it should end up fine.