Valentine Brownie Cut Out Cookies

Flash back to Valentine's Day. I wanted to make sugar cut out cookies around Christmas, but decided not to because my family received a batch from our neighbors, and we had more cookies in the house than we could eat in months (and one of us is gluten-free!). I also received a rolling pin and a pastry sheet for Christmas, and wanted to put them to use. Anyway, along came Valentine's Day, and another excuse for baking. I looked around at many different recipes, and finally stumbled upon this, deciding it was perfect for my chocolate-obsession and an opportunity to use my new tools.

I didn't have all of the ingredients for the royal icing with the cookie recipe and didn't feel like going to the grocery store, so I found one that was simple and that I had the ingredients for. I also had food coloring on hand (from Halloween, long story), which came in handy.

The cookie dough was really easy, but I left out the espresso powder since I didn't have any, and it didn't seem essential. The dough has to be refrigerated for about an hour, which I did not enjoy, but it was well worth the wait.

My roommate Kara has tons of cookie cutters, and I borrowed a few different heart shapes to use. It was pretty easy to roll the dough and cut the cookies, but the recipe does make a lot of cookies, so it took a while to get all of the cookies cut and baked (I enlisted some help from my boyfriend, Dave).

Now for the fun part: icing. I don't particularly enjoy icing things, but these cookies look much better when they are decorated. Maybe someday I can make icing like the photo with the recipe, but that was not an achievable goal for the day. So, I made the royal icing and separated it into three batches to make 3 different colors: white, pink, and red (I just used different amounts of red dye). I started by trying to cover each cookie in icing, but it was too runny and started dripping off most of the cookies. Dave had the bright idea of splattering the cookies with the icing - which ended up looking nice, and was really easy!

Bottom line: these cookies taste like brownies and cookies at the same time. They are phenomenal. Try them.

Original recipe here