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Cook from the Heart

Information about the book
About the book:
 
These are recipes specially created to suit your mood - food that will give you a lift when you are feeling down, add that extra bit of joy to your celebrations, turn a romantic occasion into something fantastic, enhance moments of calm and serenity, and even cover those days when you feel too lazy to cook but need to feed yourself and your family. 
 
Recipe: 
 
Valentine's Sugar Cookies
 
There are few things as adorable as receiving beautifully decorated cookies for Valentine’s day (or any other day, for that matter). It must be the fact that someone has taken their time to make you something, to decorate it and then wrap it beautifully that makes me feel soppy. It doesn’t matter if your icing isn’t picture perfect, mine certainly isn’t. With all the feelings of love floating around nobody will notice anything like that. These cookies are just delicious and are a hit with adults and kids alike. (To make it easier to do the icing, use squeeze bottles with small nozzles.)
 
Makes approximately 20-25 cookies
 
500g flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
pinch of salt
225g butter, at room temperature
400g sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
 
For the icing:
 
2 egg whites
500g icing sugar, sifted
juice of 1 lemon
food colouring of your choice
1. To make the cookies, combine all the ingredients in a large bowl and mix until everything is well incorporated and you have a smooth dough.
2. Roll the dough out between two sheets of baking paper and place in the fridge to firm up for 20 minutes.
3. Pre-heat the oven to 180°C.
4. Using a cookie cutter, cut hearts out of the dough and place on a baking sheet lined with baking paper.
5. Place the cookies in the oven and bake for 10-12 minutes until firm and cooked through.
6. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.
7. To make the icing, combine all the ingredients and mix until smooth.
8. Place the icing in small piping bags or into squeeze bottles and pipe ‘borders’ on all the cookies to prevent the icing from dripping off them.
9. When the borders have set slightly, you can flood the cookies with the remaining icing and get creative. Play around with stripes, dots or zigzag patterns.
10. Let the icing set for 24 hours before serving or packaging and gifting