3 Easy Valentine’s Treats
guest post by Tara C.
Children enjoy celebrating Valentine’s Day because it gives them a day full of eating sweets and giving treats to friends and family. Have your little cupids share in the work with these simple and fun ideas.
1. Pretty in Pink Sugar Cookies
For quick pink cookies:
Mix up your sugar cookies as usual. Don’t forget to use cut or mold the cookies into heart-shapes at this stage if you want to go the extra mile. Or it could be another interest such as simple car shapes for your little aspiring red race car driver (just be thankful he doesn’t need car insurance for these cookies!). When the dough is ready to be placed on cookie sheets, add red food coloring. Use your hands (with gloves, of course, unless you want red hands!) or a spatula to fold in the coloring. Add as much coloring as you like to achieve a lighter or darker pink. Then bake them and let cool.
For swirled cookies that need to set overnight before baking:
Mix up your dough. When the dough is ready for baking, split it into two chunks. Set one chunk to the side: this will be the “white” part. Take the other chunk and add red food coloring. Put on some clean kitchen gloves or find a spatula and fold the coloring into the dough. When you like the color of your dough, form it into a ball and squish it together with the “white” ball. Twist them together as much or as little as you like as you form the dough into a sausage or tubular shape. This will make it easy to slice round cookies that are ready for baking. When you have a nice tube of dough formed, wrap it in foil or wax paper and put it in the fridge overnight so that it hardens for slicing. In the morning, take out your tube of dough and slice it into ¼ inch pieces. Bake as called for by your recipe/box.
For fast and pretty decoration:
Take a container of white frosting and 3 zippy bags. Put a couple of spoonfuls of frosting into a bag along with a few drops of red food coloring. Zip it closed. Have your kids knead the color into the frosting with their hands. Repeat with a second bag and several drops more of the food coloring so that you achieve a red frosting. Finally, fill a third bag with white frosting. Now you have red, pink, and white frosting to use in decorating your cookies. When the cookies are cool, cut a very small opening in one corner of each bag. Let your children go wild! Hearts and phrases are easy to write or younger children can simply cover the cookies in abstract designs. The Valentine’s colors will ensure their cuteness no matter the artist!
2. Licorice Love
For a fun cake or batch of brownies, all you need are frosting and red shoestring licorice.
- Bake your moist and delicious cake or brownies as you please and frost with (preferably pink) frosting.
- Then call in your kids and let the fun begin! Twizzler’s Pull n Peel licorice is a great option but any shoestring licorice will work just fine.
- Direct your children to untwist the licorice and decide whether they want to add a phrase to the cake or hearts or cupid’s arrow, etc.
- Some ideas of phrases: be mine, I love you, melt my heart, hug me.
- Use the licorice to form the letters and shapes. Place them on top of the frosting which will act like “glue” and hold the shapes in place!
3. Taffy Tulips
Make edible decorations for your cake or give Mom a bouquet on a plate!
- Buy different colors of tootsie rolls or taffy.
- Break one candy into 5 or 6 pieces.
- Use your fingers to smash the pieces into small ovals.
- Roll one oval up to make the center of the flower.
- Place the other ovals around to make the petals.
- Squeeze it all together from the bottom to make sure the pieces are “glued” tight!
These simple twists on valentine’s day treats will hopefully brighten up your day with your son or daughter. The best part is that you’ll not only enjoy the excitement of making them together but also the anticipation of the sweet treats afterwards.
Author Bio: Tara C. is a blogger and mom who likes to be creative. When not staying busy in the kitchen with her young daughter and son, she likes to compare car insurance online to save money on her budget.