Valentine heart sugar cookies

I saw a commercial on TV this week for Pillsbury valentine cookies. They're really cute, but I can't imagine ever eating a cookie that started out in a can.

It seemed like it would be a really simple and fun project to do with Cal, so we whipped up a batch of Rolled Sugar Cookies using the recipe from the Joy of Cooking. It has only seven ingredients and takes less than 5 minutes to mix up - a lot less time than it would take to walk over to the store to pick up the Pillsbury can. Plus I'm sure that they taste a gazillion times better.

Rolled Sugar Cookies
1 cup butter, softened
2/3 cup sugar
1 large egg
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
1 ½  tsp vanilla
2 ⅓ cups all-purpose flour
Beat butter and sugar on medium speed until very fluffy and well blended. Add egg, baking powder, salt and vanilla and beat until well combined. Stir in flour until well blended and smooth.

At this point I divided the dough into two portions; I kneaded red food colouring into the smaller portion, and the rest I left uncoloured.

I put each portion of dough between two large sheets of wax paper, and rolled it out to a thickness of about 1/4 inch. While you're rolling you should keep checking the underside to make sure that there aren't any big wrinkles forming. If there are, just pull off the wax paper and reposition it before rolling some more.

At this point the rolled dough needs to be cooled in the fridge for 20-30 minutes, or until it's firm. Don't skimp on this step - the chilled dough is so much easier to cut and transfer without mangling it. When you take the dough out to cut out the cookies, peel off the top sheet of wax paper, then lay it back down, flip the whole thing over, and pull the paper off the other side and discard. This makes it easy to pick the cookies up and transfer them to the cookie sheet for baking.

We cut out a large cookie from the plain dough, and then cut out a smaller heart from the inside, and replaced it with a small heart cut from the red dough.

We tossed them in the oven at 350° for about 6 minutes with the convection on. If you're not using convection, it'll take about 8-9 minutes, and the sheet needs to be turned midway through baking. The cookies should be taken out of the oven when they're barely browned around the edges, and cooled on the pan.