Valentine’s Day Lovin’ From the Oven!

I decided to do a little Valentine’s Day baking for Bailey and her pre-school class.  After scouring Google and Pinterest for various treats I decided to try to make these (originally from here):

I didn’t follow the recipe exactly, but the basic concept is the same.  First things first, I gathered all of the necessary supplies:

• Wax paper
• Aluminum foil
• Baking sheet
• Rolling Pin
• Heart-shaped cookie cutters in various sizes (I bought the entire pack of 6 cookie cutters at Wal-Mart for under $2)
• Pillsbury sugar cookie dough (I decided to cheat a bit and buy the pre-made dough)
• Hard candies (I had Life Savers lying around, so I decided to work with what I had)

Then I placed the cookie dough between two sheets of wax paper and used a rolling pin to spread the dough to approximately 1/4 inch thick.

Of course, as with any baking job, this step is so much easier if you enlist the aid of an eager, apron-wearing helper.  Thankfully Bailey was more than happy to lend a freshly-washed hand!

Once the dough was rolled out we removed the top layer of waxed paper and began cutting out our hearts.

After cutting out the large hearts I used a spatula to place the cookie dough on a foil-lined baking sheet.  Then I used a smaller cookie cutter to cut out the center heart.  I removed the dough at the center and set it aside to be rolled-out and reused.

The next step involved breaking the Life Saver candies into small pieces and then pouring them into the center of each heart cookie.  I used about 1 1/2 Life Savers per cookie.

After this was done I baked the cookies as the directions on the tube of dough instructed… 350 degrees for 12-15 minutes (or until the edges of the cookies are slightly golden-brown and the candies are melted).  Once the cookies were done I removed the baking sheet and let it cool for about 5 minutes before removing the cookies and placing them on wire racks. 

And in the end we were left with a lovely plate of heart-shaped windowpane cookies!  Talk about yummy!

What a sweet Valentine’s Day treat for the kiddos (and the adults) in Bailey’s classroom!