House of Love.

I got to see all my loves who were not in Honduras on Valentine’s Day.  What a bunch of smile-bringers!

I may smack Martha Stewart in the chops.

I was innocently standing in line at WalMart, flipping through Martha’s latest magazine, when I saw the cutest cookies ever.  They were sugar cookie hearts glazed in all the colors of traditional conversation candy hearts.  I read the caption beside the photo that said you could just put red food color on a wet paper towel and use stampers to print the messages.

They were so simple – supposedly.  So lovely.  I decided I would do it – all the colors, all the conversation-heart sayings.  All for the ones I love.  I baked the cookies-on-sticks recipe, which truly works for bouquets and is amazingly delicious.  I have shared it here, before.

The glaze is just water and powdered sugar and the tiniest bit of food color.  The first batch was so runny that the glaze just poured out all over the place – very little left on the cookie.  So, I thickened some of the glaze up and piped an outline on each of the cookies.  Soupy at first, it starts hardening in exactly 4.21 seconds.  Which-I did not realize until I had squished some blue glaze onto each of the cookies I was going to make blue, thinking I could spread it evenly in a minute.  I could not.  The blue were blotchy.  The red was too red.  It took until I got to the pink to finally get the consistency right and have the “flooding” technique down.  You go around and around the cookie, flooding it with the glaze.

I decided not to do all the colors of the conversation heart candies.  I couldn’t bear it, after all.

I did try the stamping technique and it worked OK and may have been better if I had spent more than $1 for the alphabet stamp set at Michael’s.  I didn’t measure, however, nor try to space evenly-so mine did NOT look like Martha’s.

In the future, I shall employ my normal cookie decorating techniques. 

For the love.

What makes us do these things?  Bake and decorate and try new things?  Because we love.  We love cookies.  And we love each other.  Sometimes we even love Martha.

Did you get sweets from your sweet?…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  Love.

pictured: Hunter and Gavin upside-down; Guini in her pink pj’s; Averi decked out in red and pink; Gemma-a girl and her popcorn;  outlined and filled cookies; stamped cookies; a little bouquet for my family.