Ingredients

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup butter, softened (no substitutions, margarine wont work)
• 1 1/2 cups white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• -
• 1 cup of powdered
• 1 Tbsp corn syrup
• 1-2 Tbsp water
• 1/2 tsp almond extract (optional)
• Food colouring (red, pink, yellow, blue)
• Pastry bags
• #1 Wilton icing tip

Instructions

1. Measure the flour, salt and baking powder into a bowl, mix and set aside.
2. In a large bowl, cream together the softened butter and the sugar. Once smooth, add the eggs, vanilla and combine well.
3. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients mixture a little at a time. Mix until the dough is smooth and flour is fully incorporated. (I like to use my hands to mix this!)
4. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator for 1 hour. Overnight is fine too. If you want to freeze the dough, you can do so at this stage.
5. Preheat your oven to 350.
6. Working on a lightly floured surface, roll out your dough to the desired thickness, about 1/4+ inch. If your dough is to sticky, sprinkle with a bit of flour / if its dry, sprinkle a bit of water. Its a pretty forgiving dough.
7. Use your heart cookie cutter and place cookies on your pan covered in parchment paper. If you don't have parchment paper, you can litely grease the cookie sheet.
8. Bake for approximately 8 minutes or until the tops of the cookies don't look wet anymore.
9. Let them rest on the baking sheet for about 5 minutes to set, then remove to a cooling rack
10. To Make Icing
11. Mix together powdered sugar, corn syrup, water and almond extract - you want a piping consistency to start out with, so a little more firm.
12. Separate into 4 bowls - 1 for red lettering, the other 3 for your colors. You can use more colors, you just need more bowls.
13. Start by piping a heart outline on each cookie in the desired color.
14. While that is setting, thin out your icing colors with a little water until you get a flood like consistency. Should be drippy, but not too liquid.
15. Flood each cookie with desired color icing
16. Let these dry for about 2-3 hours to allow icing to begin hardening. **Icing will still be dense, but not fully hard.
17. Using your #1 Icing tip and RED piping icing, pipe whatever you want onto each cookie
18. Let rest for about 3 hours to finish setting.