Heart-Shaped Sugar Cookie Box For Valentine's Day
This year for Valentine's Day I thought it would be fun to make a heart-shaped box with sugar cookies and then fill the box with red M&M's.
Basic Sugar Dough Recipe
1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
3 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
Cream butter and sugar. Add egg and vanilla. Mix. Stir in flour and salt.
The dough will look very dry but do not worry, you can easily form a ball with your hands.
Scoop up a bit of the dough. Roll to desired thickness (1/8 inch). There is no need to use flour when rolling. Use parchment paper if you want an easy clean up.
To make the heart shaped box you will need two heart cookie cutters: one large and the other one slightly smaller. For each box cut 4 large heart shapes. Then, in the middle of 3 of the large hearts cut out a heart using the smaller cookie cutter.
This will give you one large heart (for the bottom of the box) and 3 hearts with the interiors cut out to use as the walls of the box. You do not need the center heart for the box. It can be baked and decorated as a regular heart cookie. Place all of the cut out shapes on a parchment lined cookie sheet.
Bake the cookies in 350 degree oven for 6-8 minutes. (Larger and thicker cookies will take longer). They should be slightly brown around the edges.
Cool.
Assemble the heart box.
1. Place the large heart on the bottom. Spread a little bit of frosting around the edge and place one of the cut-out rims.
2. Spread frosting on top of that rim and stack another heart rim. (For a deeper box you could keep stacking heart shaped rims)
3. Frost the 3rd rim and decorate. Allow the frosting to dry before finishing the box.
4. Fill the box with M&M's
5. Place the decorated rim on top of the heart box.
6. For a finished look you could also frost the sides of the box.
Happy Valentine's Day!
The cookies are fun to eat this way too!