You Have A Pizza My Heart Cookies -

I just love how these you have a pizza my heart cookies turned out! I am not an expert cookie maker yet, although after these I am working on my cookie decorating skills. There are just so many cute things you can make with cookies. Since I am not a cookie expert I know you can make these even if you are a cookie decorating newbie! If you know someone that loves pizza these are really cute to make for them. Also they can be my heart belongs to pizza(because really it does) for a Galentines Day party. I may be sing but I have pizza so I’m good. Plus I can eat pizza in my pjs looking like a hot mess and no one can judge me. It’s the little pleasures in life like that I enjoy. I made these cookies with sugar cookies and red and white royal icing.

You can use your favorite sugar cookie recipe or here is the recipe I use for sugar cookies that keep their shape:

3 cups of flour

1 egg

2 sticks of unsalted butter(1 cup) softened

1 cup of sugar

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

1 teaspoon of almond extract

1 teaspoon of baking powder

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a standing mixer or with a hand mixer beat softened butter and sugar on a medium setting until smooth. Add egg, vanilla and almond extracts beat on medium speed until blended.

In a separate large bowl combine dry ingredients(flour and baking powder). Slowly add flour mixture to wet ingredients(about a fourth at a time). Continue to mix on a medium low-medium speed. Mix until blended and forms a ball.

Roll out dough in between two pieces of parchment paper so it does not stick to rolling pin. Roll until it is about a half an inch thick. Then cut into shapes, for this I used the heart shape for both, the top of the pizza was cut just above the top of the heart.

Put shapes on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. Bake for 8-10 minutes. It depends on your oven, mine takes 10 minutes. I usually check on them(without opening the oven) around 7 minutes to see if they need a little more time. Then let them cool.

For the royal icing this is the recipe I use but there are ones that don’t use meringue powder and use egg whites:

3 tablespoons of meringue powder

4 cups of confectioners sugar

6 tablespoons of warm water

Blend all the ingredients together with a mixer starting at a low speed for 2 minutes then increase to a medium speed for 7 minutes or until peaks form.

To get a flood consistency add a half teaspoon of water at a time until it the frosting becomes blended after 5 seconds when frosting is dropped off the spoon into the bowl. There are a ton of videos on you tube for this so if you are a beginner like me check those out. Then divide the frosting into two bowls, keep one white and the other add a small amount of red gel icing color. I made the mistake of separating them first and the consistency wasn’t the same for each so I would suggest separating them after you get the desired consistency.

For the pizza and heart cookies I used the heart shaped cookie cutter. For the pizza ones just cut out the bottom part of the heart shape and then cut right above the top of the heart shape where it goes down just cut straight across. You can still see where the top of the heart is above. Add a squiggly line of read frosting leaving a half an inch plain at the top. Then fill the entire bottom in with white icing. I outlined it and filled it in then blended with a toothpick. Then at some parts of the edge I moved the frosting down the side to get the melted cheese look. While the white frosting is still wet I added the red dots for pepperoni about 4 for each cookie and rounded them out with a toothpick.

For the hearts I just took red icing and outlined then filled it in and blended with a toothpick.