Celebrate love with these delightful Valentine's Heart Sugar Cookies—buttery, perfectly golden, and beautifully decorated for the sweetest holiday of the year! Whether you're baking for a special someone or sharing with friends, these festive heart-shaped treats are sure to spread love in every bite.
Why You Will Love This Recipe
- Growing up I was NEVER a fan of sugar cookies, but now with this recipe, I love them!
- There are two methods to make these cookies: in a food processor, or a stand mixer. Both are simple, and easy and produce delicious cookies.
- Originally, I shared this recipe when making my best sugar cookies with a chocolate ganache, but I thought I'd share how to turn them into a tasty Valentine’s Day treat!
- Not only is the cookie top-notch in flavor, but topped with my best buttercream recipe makes these amazing!
What Goes Into This Recipe:
Butter: Keep the Butter cold if you are going to cut it into the sugar with a food processor (my preferred method), otherwise allow it to soften to room temperature for easy mixing.
Decorations: Use a variety of sprinkles, candies, and different piping tips to create different designs.
Frosting: This is my basic vanilla buttercream recipe but feel free to add food coloring gel to make it pink or red, or flavor it with different extracts.
For more delicious cookies don't miss my faovrite chocolate dipped shortbread cookies, s'mores cookies, carrot cake cookies, and these delicious walnut chocolate chip cookies!
Food Processor vs Stand Mixer
Food Processor: Using a food processor lets you create ultra-fine sugar, giving the cookies a perfectly crisp texture. It also seamlessly cuts in the cold butter, resulting in irresistibly delicious cookies.
Stand Mixer: A stand mixer still produces delicious sugar cookies, that have a buttery and crunchy texture. The difference is subtle, and you’ll only notice it if you compare them side by side with food processor-made cookies.
How to Make Valentine's Heart Sugar Cookies?
- If using a food processor, process sugar in a food processor to make ultra-fine sugar (but not powdered sugar).
- Add in cold butter, process, egg and vanilla, process, flour, baking soda, and baking powder and process. If using a stand mixer, use room-temperature butter.
- Divide dough in half, roll out, and refrigerate for at least 1.5 hours.
- Cut out your cute heart shapes.
- Bake until the edges are just golden brown.
- Let cool and whip up some vanilla buttercream dyed in different colors
- Decorate with frosting, candies, and sprinkles and you can even write sweet messages on the cookies!
Expert Tip
Moving Hearts to Cookie Sheet: Depending on how cold the dough is, it might be hard to lift the cut out shapes off the parchment paper. If that’s the case just use scissors to cut parchment paper around the cookie and place the cookie and parchment directly on the baking sheet.
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I found mine at Walmart- but this set is very similar to what I used.
If you have a baking sheet without edges use it (like this one)! It will allow the air to circulate better and bake your cookies more evenly. You can also turn a rimmed baking sheet upside down and bake on the bottom side!
I recommend using gel food coloring to dye your frosting and using either extracts or emulsions to flavor the frosting. All of these items can be found in the cake decorating aisle of craft and grocery stores. 
How To Decorate Heart Sugar Cookies?
Tips: Use a writing tip for dots and writing, a leaf tip for making ribbon details, and a star tip for making some of the other designs. Getting a Wilton decorating tip kit like this is great to have on hand for decorating!
Piping: I recommend using piping bags and piping couplers. The couplers allow you to switch out the decorating tips really easily!
Extras: Other than frosting I use sprinkles and M&M candies to decorate!
No Frosting No Problem
These sugar cookies are so delicious that you can enjoy them plain, or for an extra touch, gently press sprinkles onto the dough before baking. This creates beautiful, festive cookies without the need for frosting—just check out the picture below to see how they turn out!
More Related Valentine's Recipes
For more easy and delicious Valentine's Recipes check out my Easy Red Velvet Cake Mix Cookies, Red Velvet Cake Balls, The BEST Chocolate M&M Valentine’s Cookies, and these Chocolate Cherry Heart Cookies.
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Valentine’s Heart Sugar Cookies
Ingredients
Heart Sugar Cookies
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 cup cold butter cut into pieces
- 1 egg
- ¼ teaspoon vanilla extract or any other extract you want!
- 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
- ¼ teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon baking powder
Buttercream Frosting
- 1 cup Butter softened to room temperature
- 5 cups Powdered Sugar
- 5 tablespoon Heavy Cream
- 1 tablespoon Vanilla or Almond Extract
- Pinch Salt
- Food Color Gel Pink and Red
- Candies and Sprinkles
- Piping Bag and a few writing tips to use for decorating
Instructions
- If using a food processor, add sugar and processor, process sugar for 30-45 seconds to make superfine sugar (not powdered!)*.1 cup sugar
- Add in cold butter pieces and process for another 30-45 seconds. Until the butter and sugar are just1 cup cold butter cut into pieces
- Add in egg and vanilla extract. Process/mix until just combined. You may need to scrape down the sides at least once. Then add in the flour, baking soda and baking powder. Process until combined.1 egg, ¼ teaspoon vanilla extract or any other extract you want!, 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour, ¼ teaspoon baking soda, ¼ teaspoon baking powder
- Divide dough in half. Take half of dough and place in-between two large pieces of parchment paper. Roll dough into a flat layer about an ⅛th inch think. Do the same with the other half. Refrigerate the flattened dough for at least 1.5 hours.
- Preheat oven to 300°F and line several baking sheets* with parchment paper.
- Cut out heart cookie shape and place prepared baking sheet. Any scraps of dough leftover can be rerolled and refrigerated while the other cookies are baking. Try to use a cold baking sheet for every new batch.
- Bake for 20 minutes, on the second to lowest rack, or until edges just start to turn golden.
- While the cookies are cooling, make the buttercream frosting. Whip butter on high in a stand mixer unitl fluffly.Alternate between adding in heavy cream and powdered sugar unti you get the desired piping consistency. Then mix in the extract and salt. Divid frosting into separate portions, adding pink coloring to one, red to antoehr, and leave some of the frosting white.1 cup Butter, 5 cups Powdered Sugar, 5 tablespoon Heavy Cream, 1 tablespoon Vanilla or Almond Extract, Pinch Salt, Food Color Gel
- Decorate cookies with different pipng tips, colored frosting, and Valentine candies.Candies and Sprinkles, Piping Bag and a few writing tips to use for decorating
Notes
Tips and Tricks
- Processing the sugar in the food processor isn’t an absolute requirement, but it sure does make a huge difference in texture- so if you skip this step, the cookies will still taste delicious.
- Depending on how cold the dough is, it might be hard to lift it off the parchment paper. If that’s the case, just use scissors to cut parchment paper around the cookie and place the cookie and parchment directly on the baking sheet.
- If you have a baking sheet without edges, use it! It will allow the air to circulate better.
- I recommend using gel food coloring to dye your frosting
- *Use a few different piping tips, piping bags, and piping couplers (to switch out your tips easily), plus sprinkles and candies!
- Store cookies in an airtight container in the refrigerator. Best eaten within 3-5 days.
- Nutrition calculations are based on just the cookies without frosting or sprinles and candies.
Lisa Killian says
This recipe is so good and easy to make! The cookies are delicious and are so fun to make for Valentine's Day!