Society today makes it easy to cheat

Here is a great cheaters way to make Velentine cookies for your loved ones.
They look like you spent days working on them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I spent hours at Christmas making 5 different kinds of cookies, including two that were variations of sugar cookies to be decorated with either royal icing or egg yolk glaze. It was as fun as cookie making can be with three small children at your ankles screaming at the top of their lungs to climb up on the counter, or ice the cookies themselves, or eat the sprinkles, etc. By the time it was over I had eaten the majority of the cookies myself out of stress and frustration. I learned that while I love the drawn out process of making every cookie a beautiful spectacle to behold my four year old and two 20 month olds want to get to the good part fast and beauty is not an issue. So lesson learned here I am with some fabulously easy Pillsbury Sugar Cookie Dough Sheets that I bought at Christmas time and froze to use 6 weeks later. For those of us that are artistically and cullinary challenged this works out well. My four year old is at preschool so I am baking ahead so we can do the fun part later.

So another great thing about these dough sheets is they come on this really heavy wax paper that you can cut on.

When you finish cutting out as many cookies as you can you can ball up the dough that is left and place it between the two sheets and roll it out to cut out more. If you are too lazy to get out your rolling pin you can use a water glass on the counter beside the sink.

If you remember that your grandma's rolling pin is really cute because it is from the 50's and has red handles you might stop and dig it out anyway for some fun photo ops.

Wilton has this great gel icing that is sparkly and VERY appropriate for decorating cookies with 4 year olds. They also make ready made icing if you are too time crunched to make your own. What could be easier????

Here they are going into the oven ( I thought you might want to see my really cute kitchen towels that I picked up at no other than Walmart!!!!) Cool for a few minutes, but remove them from the baking stone or pan while warm so they won't be brittle. You don't want a bunch of crumbled cookies after all that hard work!

The little sprouts think they are beautiful and tasty and you only spent 20 minutes cutting them, baking them, and decorating them!