Valentine’s Day Slice and Bake Cookies

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These Valentine’s Day Slice and Bake Cookies are the cutest little treats for Valentine’s Day! Perfectly sweet with a red heart in the middle of each cookie! Move over store bought, your friends and family will swoon over these cookies and will be so impressed you made them homemade! Don’t be intimidated…I have tested and re-tested this method and have all your tips and tricks to the perfect heart cookie.

 

If you want to try an amazing traditional sugar cookie, I have a great Sugar Cookies with Icing recipe as well. It’s an amazing fail-proof cookie that is literally one of my favorite go-to recipes.

Why You’ll Love This Heart Cookie Recipe

These Valentine’s Day Slice and Bake Cookies are a fun variation to traditional sugar cookies! I’m sure you’ve seen the pre-made slice and bake dough with holiday images at the store. While store bought dough is great when you are short on time, nothing is better than a homemade slice and bake sugar cookie. I promise these are easier than they look, but you can totally take all the compliments when your friends gush over how fancy these are. 😉

Fun Slice and Bake Holiday Cookie Variations

The fun thing about this recipe is that you can make it for nearly any holiday! Here are a couple of fun Slice and Bake Cookie variations:

• St. Patricks Day – dye some dough green and find a shamrock cookie cutter for a cute Irish cookie!
• Easter – add less drops of food coloring for pastel pink dough and find a bunny or egg shaped cookie cutter.
• Christmas – skip the middle part and instead roll the edges of the dough in red, green and white sprinkles for a simple Christmas cookie.
• Fourth of July – taking some notes from the Christmas sections, use red, white and blue sprinkles!
• Halloween – dye the outside dough purple, black or orange and keep the inside dough plain for some spooky contrast!
• Use different Extracts– customize the flavor of your cookies using almond extract. For a Christmas slice and bake cookie use peppermint extract.

Ingredients Needed for Slice and Bake Cookies

• all-purpose flour- unbleached, fills out the cookies
• granulated sugar– white sugar used to sweeten
• pure vanilla extract– for flavoring. Use pure vanilla, not imitation for best flavoring.
• red food coloring– liquid or gel food coloring.
• pantry staples– butter, baking powder, large egg

How to Make Slice and Bake Cookies

For full recipe details including ingredient measurements, see the printable recipe card down below. Here are step-by-step instructions for making these fun Valentine’s Day Slice and Bake Cookies:

Make Sugar Cookie Dough

In a small bowl, stir flour and baking powder together. Set aside. Cream butter and sugar together. Stir in egg and vanilla extract. Slowly incorporate the dry ingredients.

Add Red Fooding Coloring to Smaller Portion of Dough

Once dough has come together, remove 2/3 of dough to a separate bowl. Stir in the red food coloring to the smaller portion of dough until uniform in color.

Roll Out Red Dough

Next, roll the red dough out pretty thick, about 1 inch thick, and start cutting out hearts with a small heart-shaped cookie cutter. Once you have them all cut, line them all up and do your best to stick them together without ruining their shape. I ended up with 3 stacks of hearts.

Freeze Red Heart Stacks- (optional, but highly recommended)

Pro Tip: I have found that freezing the stacks for 30 minutes or so makes them easier to work with and not loose their shape. Lightly cover stacks with plastic wrap on a baking sheet and place into the freezer. The regular dough is actually better to be softer (at room temp) so it can stick well to the hearts, otherwise there are going to be some holes between the two colors. 

Roll Remaining Dough Out

Divide your remaining uncolored dough into 3 (since I have 3 stacks of red hearts) and cover each heart stack, being careful to keep them together.

Pro Tip: I found that rolling out snakes of dough and sticking them down the sides was the easiest and fastest way to get them covered.

Wrap + Refrigerate 1 Hour

Once the heart slice stacks are covered completely, give each a gently roll to create a smooth, round edge. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate 1 hour to overnight.

Preheat Oven + Slice Each Cookie Dough Log

When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350° F. Line baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat, or use an ungreased cookie sheet. Set aside.

Remove the dough logs from fridge and with a very sharp knife, cut thick slices (1/2 inch rounds) . Place onto the prepared baking sheet leaving 1 inch around each cookie.

Bake Heart Cookies

Bake sugar cookies for 8-10 minutes or until cookie is barely (and I mean barely) golden brown on the bottoms, if brown at all and is no longer shiny. Remove from oven and cool 2 minutes before cooling completely on a wire rack.

Pro Tip: Wanna know the trick to having perfectly round cookies? Before removing from the baking sheet, take a large round cookie cutter and swirl the cookies around it immediately after they come out of the oven and are still hot. This is called “cookie scooting”. This will fix some of the edges and give them a rounder shape.

Storage + Make Ahead Directions

Store cookies in an airtight container, at room temperature for up to 3 days.

To Freeze + Bake Later– prepare dough as the recipe instructs up until placing the dough in the fridge. At this point you can place wrapped dough cylinders into a freezer safe bag and into the freezer until ready to bake. When ready to bake, allow the dough to thaw overnight in the fridge before baking.

Love Sugar Cookies? Give These Recipes a Try!

• Valentine Sugar Cookies
• Vanilla Bean Cut-Out Sugar Cookie Recipe with Royal Icing
• Lemon Sour Cream Sugar Cookies
• Sugar Cookie Bars
• Copycat Swig Sugar Cookies

More Valentine’s Day Treats

• Valentine’s Day Cake Pops
• Mini Red Velvet Cheesecakes
• Molten Lava Cake
• Easy Dipping Chocolate
• Strawberry Cheesecake Cookies
• Best Recipe for Pavlova

Be sure to make these soon for the ones you love! The printable recipe card is below. Enjoy! 🙂

If you make this recipe, I would really appreciate it if you would give it a star rating and leave your review in the comments! If you have a picture of your finished dish, post it on Instagram using the hashtag #laurenslatest and tagging me @laurens_latest.