How to Decorate Heart-Shaped Sugar Cookies for Your Valentine

There’s no better way to say “I love you” than with sugar cookies — especially ones decorated to look this good. This Valentine’s Day, celebrate your special someone with beautiful sugary treats.

Heart-Shaped Sugar Cookies

Level: Easy

What You Need

  • Baked heart-shaped sugar cookies (we used this recipe)
  • Royal icing (both piping and flooding consistency) in turquoise, red, pink, light pink (we used this recipe)
  • Piping-consistency royal icing in light green and white
  • Piping bags
  • Couplers
  • Round piping tips (we used #2, #1.5)
  • Leaf piping tip (we used #65)
  • Toothpick (optional)
  • Icing bag stand (optional)
  • Instructions

    1. Prep Your Icing

    Mix your royal icing in both piping and flooding consistencies. Then color each batch of icing as instructed in the materials list.

    Good to Know: You’re going to decorate with turquoise royal icing first, then let the cookies dry completely before moving on. If you make all your royal icing colors at once, cover each with plastic wrap until it’s ready to use so it doesn’t crust over and become lumpy. Otherwise, you can make just the turquoise icing now and mix the rest when you’re ready to add details.

    2. Pipe and Flood

    Spoon the piping-consistency turquoise royal icing into a piping bag fitted with a #2 tip. Pipe an outline along the edges of the cookies.

    Add the flooding-consistency turquoise royal icing to another piping bag and fill the outlines. Set cookies aside to dry.

    Good to Know: How long it takes your cookies to dry depends on the humidity of where you live. It can take anywhere from a few hours to overnight, so plan ahead.

    3. Pipe Dots

    When the base is completely dry, fill a piping bag with red flood icing and make a dot on the top right side of the cookies. Size isn’t important, but we made ours about the size of a pencil eraser.

    Let the red dot set, then add more dots around it using pink and light pink flood icing. There is no wrong place to add the dots, so do what looks best to you.

    Pro Tip: It’s important to let the first dot set before adding more. If two wet dots touch each other, they will run together and create a mess.

    4. Add a Swirl

    Once all the dots are dry, use a #1.5 tip to add a swirl on top of the coordinating color. If the end of the swirl doesn’t lie flat against the cookie, use a toothpick to gently push it into place.

    5. Pipe the Leaves

    Use green icing and a small leaf piping tip to add light green leaves around the cluster of roses. You don’t have to wait until the rose swirls are dry, but be careful not to damage them with the leaf tip.

    6. Add the Lace

    Give your cookies a romantic touch with a little lace detail, using your #1.5 tip to pipe clusters of three tiny dots.

    Let your cookies dry before boxing them up and gifting to your sweetheart!

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    2 Responses to “How to Decorate Heart-Shaped Sugar Cookies for Your Valentine”

    1. Dorothy Ouimette

      I have been wanting to learn how to do this technique

    2. Sandra Verdejo

      Quiero aprenderrrr