A Valentine's Day Tradition Continues
Many years ago, my children fell in love with a giant cookie. While grocery shopping the week before Valentine's Day, we encountered a large table placed strategically in front of the cash registers. It was covered with large, flat boxes, each containing an enormous heart-shaped chocolate chip cookie. Decorated with chocolate frosting writing ("Be Mine," "I Love You," etc.) and fluffy rows of chocolate swirls along the outer edge of each heart, they definitely appealed to my children.
But the price was not very attractive to me. At $12, they were out of the price range of SINK's (Single Income, Numerous Kids) like us. Despite my children's pleas, I had to play the bad guy and tell the kids sorry, but no.
I felt guilty, though, at the sight of their disappointed faces, and decided that I would make them a giant cookie on my own. It would be easy and inexpensive; I would make chocolate chip cookie dough from scratch, use a rubber spatula to shape it like a heart on a cookie sheet, and after baking it, decorate it with the cake decorator I used on our birthday cakes.
That Valentine's Day, I shooed everyone out of the kitchen. The kids could tell something was up. Since when didn't Mom want help? But they knew better than to hang around. Mom was on a mission; better stay out of her way.
The batter went together easily, and as I shaped it into a heart on my biggest cookie sheet, I felt like an artist. This was fun! I slid the pan into the oven and pictured my children's excitement when I allowed them back into the kitchen to see their Valentine's Day surprise. I set the timer for 20 minutes, and began to wash the dishes.
I was rinsing the utensils when the oven began to smoke. It had only been ten minutes, far too soon for the cookie to scorch on the bottom. What was going on?
At that moment the alarms went off. Our house has three electric smoke detectors that are wired into the electrical system. There's no easy way to turn them off. However, we had found that we could stop the incredibly loud alarms by opening all the windows and stationing a child at the front door to swing it back and forth, thus guiding the smoke out of the house.
We made that discovery through hard experience each time a pizza got too dark or a pie boiled over. By now my children knew the drill. When the alarms went off, one child ran to swing the front door, another sped around opening windows, and the little ones sat on the floor, covering their ears with their hands and crying.
I opened the oven door to discover that my giant cookie had erupted into a cookie dough volcano, spilling chocolate-splotched lava all over the bottom of my oven. I spent the next several minutes scraping scorched dough off of the oven floor.
In surveying the wreckage, I realized that I had underestimated just how much cookie dough expands. Undaunted, I began again, this time dividing the dough between two cookie sheets. I was rewarded with two somewhat lop-sided but totally intact heart-shaped cookies. By the time I piped chocolate frosting all over them, you could hardly tell they were asymmetrical. Needless to say, the kids were thrilled. I even let my husband have some, after he apologized for coming in from work, sniffing the faintly smoky air and calling out, "Mom's been baking again?"
By the following year, I had forgotten the cookie episode, but my children had not. So I found myself making and decorating the giant heart-shaped cookies again. That made it a tradition, so I have repeated this project every year since. Some years, I forget about making the cookies until one of the kids or my husband mentions it, and then I quietly add chocolate chips to my grocery list. One year I remembered to make the cookies, but actually forgot my hard-learned lesson and put all the dough on one cookie sheet. You know what happened. Since then, I've been good about using two cookie sheets.
Now we only have two children left at home. My oldest daughter lives on her own, so I freeze a giant cookie for when she visits home. During my son's first year at an out-of-state college, we turned up at his dorm a few days after Valentine's Day with a giant heart-shaped cookie to share with him. He seemed very glad to see it... er, us.
Meanwhile, our two younger children have already mentioned how much they are looking forward to this year's giant cookie. Fortunately, they are now old enough to open the windows and swing the front door back and forth, just in case.
Giant Heart Cookies (makes two)
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Cream together:Stir together in separate bowl:
- 1 cup butter, softened
- ½ cup sugar
- ½ cup packed brown sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 t. vanilla extract
Add to butter mixture; mix well. Then fold in:
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 t. salt
- 1 t. baking soda
- 1 12-ounce bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips
- ½ cup chopped pecans (optional)
Grease two jelly-roll pans. Divide the batter between the two pans, and then use a rubber spatula to spread the dough on each pan into a heart shape. Be sure to leave open a one-inch area around the perimeter of the pan to allow the cookie to spread.
Bake for 20-25 minutes, until edges are nicely browned and center is set. If heart is lopsided, use a sharp knife to gently trim edges and define curves. Cool completely before decorating with chocolate frosting.
Chocolate frosting
Cream together:Then add and mix in completely:
- 6 tablespoons butter, softened
- 6 tablespoons baking cocoa
- 1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
Blend in:
- 2 cups powdered sugar
- 2 tablespoons milk
Beat until frosting is of spreading consistency (a bit of additional milk may be needed). Use a cake decorator's tube to pipe frosting on chocolate hearts. Use various tips for flowers, decorative borders and writing your message.
If you don't have a decorator's tube, frost the entire surface of both cookies, then sprinkle with pink, red and white Valentine's Day sprinkles (found in craft and cooking stores).
Copyright 2006 Barbara Frank/Cardamom Publishers