Slice-and-Bake Heart Sugar Cookies: How to Celebrate Valentine’s Day (on a Budget You’ll Love!)

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups butter or margarine, room temperature
• 2 cups white sugar
• 4 eggs, room temperature
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 5 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• Red gel food coloring
• Heart-shaped cookie cutter

Instructions

To prepare the dough:
1. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Using a spatula, gently fold in flour, baking powder, and salt until just incorporated.
2. Transfer 1/3 dough into another large bowl. Add about 4-7 drops of food coloring, using your hands to massage the color in evenly throughout the dough. (Add additional coloring as needed to achieve a fairly bright red color--you can also flour your hands to keep the dough from sticking.)
3. Chill dough for at least 3-4 hours.
To assemble cookies:
4. Line two large cutting boards with parchment paper, taping down the corners as needed to keep the paper from curling up as you work with dough. Flour a rolling pin and roll each of the doughs out to 1-inch thickness.
5. Use a small heart-shaped cookie cutter (no bigger than 2 inches if possible) to punch out heart shapes in the red dough. Stack the hearts horizontally. Re-gather the dough scraps and flatten out; punch out more heart shapes and continue stacking until you have finished using as much of your dough as possible.
6. Working with a few stacked hearts at a time, gently handle your flattened plain dough and wrap it around the hearts to form a circular log. Be careful not to squish the hearts as you do so.
7. Wrap the finished logs with plastic wrap and freeze for at least 6-8 hours (or overnight). If you are having trouble lifting the logs from the parchment paper, simply wrap the top of the logs and place entire cutting board in freezer.
To bake:
8. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease a cookie sheet and set aside.
9. Unwrap logs and place on a cutting board. Slice to 1/2-inch thickness with a sharp knife, then set cut-side down on prepared sheet.
10. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until lightly golden around the edges and just set. Allow to cool on stovetop for 5 minutes before enjoying!

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