In the spirit of the month of love, we could think of no better way to celebrate than with delicious, and whimsical cookies. Today’s DIY tutorial is one for the sweet tooth! We’ve whipped up gorgeous sugar cookies you can make at home, and even better? Fun paper bags to package them up, ready for gifting to your guests.

Today’s tutorial is a two-parter – make your little paper pockets to store the cookies and then the really fun part – make and ice your biscuits.

Heart Cookies

Materials 

  • Cookie-cutter – we love a heart (for obvious reasons) but you could go to something personal with this. Love dinosaurs? Pick a dinosaur cookie cutter. Your initials, your favourite thing. There are cookie cutters for everything. Places to look for your cookie cutters are supermarkets, kitchenware stores, education/office supply stores or our larger chain stores.
  • All the ingredients for your favourite cookies. We have used this tried and true recipe from Taste for vanilla butter cookies many a time. We rolled out the dough and used the cookie cutter to cut our shapes.
  • Your icing (recipe below)
  • Piping bag – A ziplock bag with the corner cut off also works well as a makeshift stand-in. Make sure that you only cut the tiniest piece off your corner just prior to piping.
  • Epic sprinkles – find these at a cake decorating store or Etsy. We chose pink sprinkles to match our pink and red icing for this project. Mixes that include sprinkles of different shapes, sizes and finishes like these give your cookies their special touch of glam.

Icing Recipe

Ingredients 

  • Two cups of icing sugar
  • One teaspoon vanilla essence (just because we love vanilla!)
  • Three tablespoons of milk (add one at a time and mix)
  • Gel food colouring – a tiny bit of gel food colouring goes a long way. Buy gel food colouring from cake decorating stores, or larger chain stores. (Gel food colouring is very intense in colour, and doesn’t change the consistency of your icing like a liquid food colouring will).

Method

  1. Sift icing sugar into a bowl.
  2. Add vanilla and milk to create a firm mixture – adding more sifted icing sugar as needed.
  3. Stir until well combined.
  4. Add your gel food colouring. It is easiest to do this with the end of a toothpick or skewer (a little goes a long way) so you can easily control the colour. Stir until the colouring is dissolved throughout your icing. Add more until you get your desired colour.
  5. Divide your icing into 2 bowls – one for your firm icing (for the icing border) and one for your runnier icing (to flood the centre of the biscuit).
  6. Add milk a little at a time, to your ‘runnier icing’ bowl so it becomes the consistency of thick runny cream.

Method For Decorating

Step One

Make the cookies to your recipe and let them cool.

Step Two

Make your icing! You’re going to need two consistencies. One firmer, that is going to act as your icing border and one that is runnier that you will use to “flood” the middle of your shape with icing.

Step Three

Fill your piping bag with the firm icing and trace the outline of the shape on the cookie. This creates your border which creates a barrier for your runnier icing. Set aside and leave to harden.

Step Four

From your runnier icing bowl, add icing carefully to the centre of your biscuit and with a toothpick or skewer, carefully spread the icing out to the piped border until the whole of the biscuit is covered with icing.

Have fun with your sprinkles! Add them to your cookie however you please. Leave aside to harden.


.

Stitched Paper Favour Bags

Materials

  • Sewing machine
  • Red coloured thread (or colour of your choice)
  • Brown paper
  • Ruler
  • Scissors
  • Washi Tape – If only sewing on three sides, you’ll need washi tape to close the bag.
  • Coloured paint
  • Stamp of your choice – we have stamps for an education supply store we love to use. But any stamp will do. Alternatively, you can draw a shape in pencil and paint it yourself.

Method

Step One

Start by measuring the size of your favour (in our case, a delicious heart cookie). You’ll need to leave two centimetres around the cookie, to allow for your stitching and margin. If you are using a cookie-cutter, you can use this as your sizing template.

Step Two

Cut two pieces of brown paper to the correct size, for each favour

Step Three

Now it’s time to decorate! This is easier to do when you haven’t sewn it yet. For our decoration, we used red paint and a heart stamp, stamping the shape onto each piece of paper in the centre, and leave to dry.

Step Four

Once your paint is dry, you can get to sewing up your bag. There are two ways to do this, and it depends on how much work you want to make for yourself once you’ve made for your favours.

Option A: Sew your bag on three sides, turning at each corner, and starting your stitch a half a centimetre from the edge. As you get to the last side, slip your favour into the bag and sew the fourth side. Leave about 1cm of thread at the end.

Option B: Sew the bag on three sides. When your favour is ready, slip inside the bag and seal with washi tape.

Enjoy! You could place these at each place setting, but they would also look fun in a basket for guests to grab on their way home.