Homeschooling the Teen Years - Valentine Cookie Grams

When I was in high school we had fundraisers on Valentine's Day, where you could pre-order a cookie gram (an extra large cookie frosted with a Valentine's message) to be delivered to a friend during class time on the 14th.

I thought it would be fun help the girls make up a batch of their own cookie grams to deliver door to door to some of their homeschooling friends.  But then it started snowing - again, and I pictured myself spending my Valentine's Day sliding across town, and decided they might do just as well delivering them to the kids at youth group tonight.

Pressed for time, we scaled back the cookies to a sixth of a batch of dough each.  I had already been experimenting with baking chocolate chip hearts, so I had dough already chilled in the refrigerator (if you don't chill the dough you end up with a cookie blob instead of a heart).

We shaped the cold dough, pushing it down by hand, into large, exaggerated heart shapes about 1/2'' thick...

… and baked them for 13 minutes.

After they had cooled for as long as we could let them, the girls outlined them, and piped on each of their friends' initials in chocolate frosting...

… using a cheapo, plastic decorating kit I picked up for under $5.00 at Walmart, and am now completely in love with.  It was nicer than messing around with piping bags...

… and it made it very easy for the girls to control the frosting.

We were quickly running out of time, so we popped the cookies in the freezer in order to harden the frosting enough to bag.  Each one fit perfectly into a quart sized zip-up baggie.

The last I saw of them, they were loaded into a box and headed out the door for delivery.

It's great to be a homeschooler.