Yes, now that the groundhog has seen his shadow, Valentine’s Day is just around the corner. Since General Mills sent frosting and cookie mix home with me, I thought that it might be fun to pull out the decorator tips and food coloring. When I started on my first cookie, I was reminded that piping frosting is not my forte. Actually, the "B" I got in cake decorating was what kept me from a 4.0 at MCTC, not the English class we had to write a research paper for. After some practice, the rest of the cookies turned out well enough to share with the general public (a.k.a. church friends at the monthly fellowship dinner).
Heart-shaped cookies go along with conversation hearts and the cheap tear-apart valentines in my school-day memory bank. I remember one year in particular. I was sitting in 7th period study hall, probably not doing homework, when the principal asked to talk to me. Yikes. It turned out that he had gotten some of the sugar cookies that I had brought in for Valentine’s day. He asked me for the recipe, because one of his daughters was looking for a good one. I was embarrassed, because I was sure that he couldn’t mean MY cookies. CERTAINLY he had gotten somebody else’s mixed up with mine and when he would try the recipe I would give everything would turn out wrong and he would be terribly disappointed. Nonetheless, I copied the recipe down and gave it to him. To this day I wonder how his batch turned out.