Easy Valentine Cookies (2024)

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With a simple decorating technique and a one-bowl, no-mixer shortbread dough, these crisp, buttery, super easy Valentine cookies are perfect for spreading the love!

I've had a lovely week. As in, LOVE-ly. You see, I've been playing around in the kitchen all week, coming up with some fun, delicious, beautiful and easy Valentine cookies. I tried a bunch of ideas and made a HUGE mess with flour, sugar, icing, sprinkles, nonpareils and cookie cutters strewn all over the kitchen. In the end, I'm thrilled with these crisp, buttery, shortbread cookies.

It's funny how one thing leads to another. After Scott and I got all the Christmas decorations taken down and tucked them away in January, the house looked so plain, both indoors and out. We rearranged a few things inside to freshen the look and I happened to see a beautiful wreath on Amazon to brighten the front door. When the wreath arrived, it was even prettier than it looked online. I didn't waste a minute before putting it up.

Well, that pretty pink wreath got me thinking about Valentines Day and that got me thinking about sweet treats to share with loved ones. Then cookie ideas started rolling around in my mind. I couldn't wait to get started. And now here I am, ready to tell you all about these wonderful Easy Valentine Cookies. See what I mean about one thing leading to another? Yikes!

I decided to use a favorite technique for these cookies, one that I've used over and over with great success. You might remember it from these Christmas Shortbread Cookies, these Christmas Tree Shortbread Cookies or these Spring Shortbread Cookies, to name a few. In fact, I've utilized this easy trick so many times that I decided to give it a name. I call it the Dip, Drip and Flip technique. Check out below how easy (and fun) it is!

The dough for these Easy Valentine Cookies is also an old friend. I've been a huge shortbread fan for as long as I can remember and have spent years tweaking and refining to come up with a perfect recipe. The cookies had to be buttery and crisp (and maintain that crispness when stored), they had to hold their shape in the oven and lastly, but most importantly, the recipe had to be easy to put together and have super delicious results.

This Easy Valentine Cookies recipe is all that. With just the right proportions of butter, sugar and flour to yield that sweet, buttery flavor and shatteringly crisp texture these cookies also store well for at least a week. The one-bowl, no-mixture dough technique takes minutes to put together. A small portion of corn starch and a chill before baking helps these cookies maintain their pretty shape in the oven.

So here's a little picture tutorial on the Dip, Drip and Flip technique:

A fun party idea!

I had an inspiration while I was decorating these cookies. Wouldn't it be fun to have a Dip, Drip and Flip party? Here's how it could work:

• Mix, roll and bake the cookies in advance. (You could do this several weeks in advance and store them in the freezer or several days ahead and keep them in an airtight storage container.)
• Provide bowls of the white icing/glaze, toothpicks, an array of gel food color and some pretty sprinkles for the party guests.
• Demonstrate the easy Dip, Drip and Flip technique.
• Let each guest swirl their favorite color(s) into the glaze and then, dip, drip and flip! Have fun checking out each other's artworks!
• Offer coffee, tea and/or tall glasses of cold milk and indulge!
• How about a DD&F party for kids? They'd have a blast doing the easy technique and would be "wowed!"at the beautiful creations they could make.

I'm hoping this post and these Easy Valentine cookies have put you in a LOVE-ly mood or mode. You probably have everything you need to make a batch. They'll make lovely gifts for friends, family, co-workers, neighbors... anyone you want to share a little delicious love with!

Café Tips for making these Easy Valentine Cookies

• To dress these cookies up a bit, I added a sprinkle of red, pink and white nonpareils on top of the glaze. I like to concentrate most of the sprinkles at the upper edge of the hearts for an artistic effect but you could also sprinkle the nonpareils evenly over the cookies. You choose
• Because there’s no mixer used with this Easy Valentines Cookies recipe, the butter needs to be very soft when mixing up the dough. That can be difficult, especially during the colder months, even if you let the butter sit out for hours. A short stint in the microwave on power level 10 (10%) works like magic to soften butter. You’ll need to experiment a bit with your microwave though, as they’re all different. Start with 20 or 30-second increments at power level 10 until you learn how long your microwave will take to get the butter nice and soft, but not melted.
• Another technique I often use to soften butter is to put it in the microwave overnight with the light on. To keep the light on in the microwave I put a folded paper towel in the door. It works like a charm!
• I used Wilton’sTeal and Pink gel food colorings for these Easy Valentine Cookies.
• I decided to try rolling these cookies a bit thinner (⅙-inch) than some of my previous shortbread cookies. They turned out wonderfully crisp and with less calories per cookie (a win-win!) I'm not great at rolling dough evenly though so I cheat a bit with a, what I call, magic rolling pin.This reasonably priced rolling pin is a super easy way to achieve the same perfect thickness for all your cookies. It has 1/16, ⅙, ¼, and ⅜-inch removable discs, which make it. Have a baker on your shopping list? This would make a lovely gift that can be used year round.

• I used almond extract in my glaze. Feel free to use other flavorings. Orange, lemon, raspberry and coconut extracts are also delicious. You could also just use vanilla, but not more than a half teaspoon, as it will darken the icing.
• Flavor extracts can vary in intensity. It’s better to start with a small amount in the icing, then take a little taste. You can always add more, but you can’t remove it!
• The recipe calls for a one hour (or longer) chill for the cutout cookies. If I’m in a big hurry, I just pop them into the freezer for 10-15 minutes.
• A few tips on rolling and cutting out cookies:
  • Keep your work surface and rolling pin lightly dusted with flour.
  • I also like to rub the cutting edge of my cookie cutter in a little flour in between each cookie.
  • Press fairly firmly when cutting out the cookies, but don’t twist the cookie cutter as the heart shape will get distorted.
  • If you don’t have room in your refrigerator to chill the cookies on two sheet pans, just transfer all of them to one pan after cutting. Then later, once they’re chilled, you can divide them between the two pans for baking.
  • Unlike many rolled cookie doughs, rerolling the scraps does not produce inferior cookies. However, when re-rolling, try to incorporate as little extra flour as possible.
• Occasionally, some of the cookies will be slightly puffed on the top when removed from the oven. You can give them a nice flat top by pushing on the top gently with a metal spatula.
• Sometimes after mixing the glaze for these cookies, there will be lots of bubbles. These bubbles will cause imperfections in the surface of the glazed cookies. Simply stir the glaze very slowly to get rid of the bubbles.
• If you let the glazed cookies drip into the same bowl over and over the glaze will get murky before you’re finished icing all the cookies. Because of this, I like to let the glazed cookies drip into a separate bowl.
• I got my heart-shaped cookie cutters from Amazon.