My Valentine's Cookies! - Decorated Cookie Set #2

HELLO! and BUCKLE UP boys and girls because this is probably going to go on for a little bit. Valentines is my favorite! 
So I made a bunch of Valentine's cookies and sent them off to all the grandparents!
This time I did chocolate and vanilla. That chocolate recipe is really good but I need more practice with the dough. 
These were a challenge... and I'm pretty sure you're going to see those words a lot because I'm kind of ambitious. So we're going to go through how this set went. It was a much larger set and it was a few months back now so I don't actually remember how many cookies I made but it was close to 80. 

Yes I know you only see 50-something cookies here but you know things happen...
I had a lot of leftover dough so I also made 22 more for my neice and nephew and I ended up remaking 8 cookies---anyway let's get started we have a lot to cover here.

So this was only my 2nd set so I'm still trying to figure out icing consistency and I'm also experiementing with tips... and LOOK actual piping bags. Those pictured are Wilton but I now order bags in bulk on Amazon. 

These came together really really fast and I absolutely loved how they came out! I was so impressed with these as I was creating them. I definitely love using decorative tips! I had to practice for a while before I figured out how to pip the the little roses but it was worth it because they came out so cute! 

OH.MY.GOODNESS.
Aren't they the cutest!!! I was so in love with these bouquets! 
I think I will definitely do more bouquets in the future. My green icing started out a little too thin as you can the stems have kinda melted together but I was able to thicken it up properly to get the definition on the leaves so I'm getting the hang of it.

I loved these cookies! It went really fast though and I was enjoying it so much that I forgot to get pictures of a lot of the process but this was freehanded with the icing it's really not much more complicated than that. The colors look pretty good here. I had a lot of good light as I was making these which was really awesome but for some reason I could not get the pink to come through for the heart cookies and the pink was all the same. It looks mostly true to color in this picture. It was a pretty pink and look at that red... L.O.V.E I.T. 
It's difficult to get a deep red so I was pretty happy with that!

Soooo here is where I hit a snag. I had planned on making a little boxes of chocolates and I wanted to use actual chocolate, so I attempted to fill these using chocolate almond bark and it was an epic fail. It just did not go well. If I would have actually tempered some chocolate I may have been able to pipe it properly but it was not good. The chocolate just set up way too quickly to get anything done but, that just means it's time to improvise! 

 I managed to get one to look halfway decent (pictured above) and then I decided to start over and try something different. It wasn't terrible but it wasn't really working out. I have a silcone mold with little heart shapes and I decided to make little chocolate hearts to go inside the boxes.. technically still a box of chocolate... 
 The hearts were shaped a little differently but they fit and I think it worked perfectly. It was nice that I didn't have to use that much black icing anyway. The cookie was absolutely delicous and they were super cute! I ended up really loving them AND I got to eat allllll those rejects! It was really a win win. 
I'm glad I didn't give up on them. These are the 8 cookies I remade that I spoke of earlier.
​Look how cute they are!! 

Okay! 
​Now that we have the last little bump out of the way it's time to see these babies all bagged up because they were ADORABLE if I do say so myself. 

That's it!
​That was the Valentine's cookie decorating journey! 
Everything came out beautifully I was really happy with these!! Even with the little oopsy I had these were still finished pretty quickly so even though it was a lot of cookies it wasn't a lot of decorating. Anyway I hope you enjoyed! 
See you next time!
Much love
Amanda