Cross-stitch Heart Cookies

I was recently given a cross-stitching kit for my birthday and loved it so much I would not look up from it until it was finished. Of course, my first thought was to combine this new love with an old one - baking! 

What you’ll need:

• Rolling Pin (an adjustable pin or guides work best)
• Sugar Cookie Dough (CookieCutterKingdom recipe here)
• Royal Icing (CookieCutterKingdom recipe here)
• Piping Bag
• Parchment Paper
• Paper Cones
• CookieCutterKingdom’s Heart Cookie Cutter
• Gel food coloring (I use Spectrum)
• Scribe tool
• Small offset spatula

First, roll out your dough between two sheets of parchment paper to ½" thick. Due to all the lines that need to be piped for this cookie, it works best with the 4" cutter. Using the cutter, cut out the cookies from chilled dough, bake, and allow to cool completely before decorating.

 Begin by outlining and flooding your hearts with the desired color.

Letting them dry overnight is best, but at least 8 hours is okay. Next, begin your grid by starting in the center of the cookie and piping evenly spaced vertical lines with a stiff consistency royal icing. I have trouble getting the first line straight down the center so what I like to do is use a ruler and scribe tool to etch a faint guide line.

Once you’ve got the center line piped, it’s pretty easy going. Taking your time and keeping a steady hand are key. After you’ve completed the vertical lines, turn the cookie 180 degrees and repeat to create a grid.

As you can see, it looks a little rough around the edges. At this point, you can use a knife or spatula to trim down the ends of the lines for a cleaner look and a nice straight edge when you add a border. Keeping your knife flush with the edge of the base color, cut straight down, just trimming the excess icing off the ends of the grid (you don’t want to cut into the cookie).

Now for really fun part: coming up with the pattern! There’s a great guide here for how to create your own designs. After a quick google search, I chose to merge together components of a few different patterns that I liked.

As with piping the grid, it’s easiest to find the center and work your way out. Use a medium consistency icing to fill in the squares.

The last step is to pipe a border using the same medium consistency icing to give it a clean edge.

And you're done! I think the next step for me is to do a cross stitch of a cookie decorated in cross stitch!

Enjoy,
Amanda
@minimandakay