We have reinvented all the holidays and festive days now – except Valentine’s Day.

I consider St. Patrick’s Day to be the start of my COVID pandemic experience. Whew!

Hopefully, people converted their Super Bowl experiences this past Sunday into something that included whoever-is-in-your-bubble-game-watching. The world does not need another surge of hospital admissions.

I hosted my first ever Super Bowl Party last year – even created a tablecloth gridiron with helmet place cards. Was looking forward to a repeat. Darn. Just me and a mini gluten-free homemade pizza this time.

So, what can be done to spread the love at Valentine’s this year? How about a batch of 5-ingredient cookies to share?

I made these at Christmas and had such a blast making and sharing, I thought I’d do the same for Valentine’s. Not sure if they will survive the mailing journey to my kids or not. I may have to send them before pictures!

All credit goes to Southern Living magazine for the original. They included a recipe card for these cookies in a mailing last year, and I converted them to gluten-free, changed the vanilla extract to almond, and added a pinch of salt. Guess they are 5.5 ingredients now.

Here’s the recipe that is easy to fix and fun to decorate – solid therapy for getting into a great frame of mind. Here’s the recipe as I converted it:

Easy Gluten Free Sugar Cookies

Ingredients for cookies

½ cup/125 ml butter, softened

1 cup/250 ml powdered sugar

1 large egg

1 ½ tsp/7.5 ml vanilla or almond extract

1 ½ cups/375 ml gluten free flour – with extra for rolling out dough – I use Bob’s Red Mill brand

Pinch of salt, if desired

Method for cookies

Beat butter and powdered sugar at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy.

Add egg and vanilla or almond extract and beat 30 seconds.

Add flour, beating at low speed until combined.

Place dough onto floured parchment paper and roll to ¼ inch/6.35 mm thick. I had to dust the dough with additional flour to keep from sticking to the rolling pin.

Transfer the parchment with flattened dough to a cookie sheet and chill in refrigerator for 15 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375 F/190.6 C.

Cut dough with lightly floured cookie cutters, place ½ inch/ 1.27 cm apart on parchment paper-lined baking sheets. Reroll scraps, and repeat process.

Bake in batches for 8-10 minutes or until golden brown around edges. Cool completely on wire rack.

Decorating Icing

2 cups/500 ml powdered sugar

1 ½ Tablespoons/22 ml meringue powder – I use Wilton Meringue Powder

A few drops of vanilla or almond extract, if desired

3-4 Tablespoons/45-60 ml water

Food coloring gels

Mix powdered sugar, meringue powder, and the least amount of water until smooth. If you want to pipe decorations, a thicker version will be desired. If you want to cover a large surface, a thinner icing would be preferred.

Divide icing into small bowls if using food color. Use a toothpick to dip into the colored gel and then stir into icing until color is evenly distributed. A little dab of coloring goes a long way!

Spread or pipe the icing onto cookies as desired. A toothpick is your good friend if floating a smooth surface. Check out Karla’s Cookies HERE: Karla’s Cookies (teachable.com) for a free tutorial on Royal Icing.

My Valentine’s cookies are humble, but clearly filled with love. It was an excellent afternoon’s worth of creative therapy and has given me a little something to share.

Enjoy! It would be wonderful to give each of you a cookie in thanks for being such loyal supporters of foodtalk4you, but you’ll have to make your own!

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Happy Remodeled Valentine’s Day-

Deidre

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