Playing Card Cookies

For those of us without dates on Valentine's Day, it's a rather depressing holiday. Netflix, apparently, knows this and decided to release the entire season of "House of Cards" on Valentine's Day. Now I've seen the original British series and I wasn't a huge fan. I think Kevin Spacey is an excellent actor and definitely improves the show. But, as much as I like him and political dramas, I just can't get into the show--perhaps it's because the actors (well, just Kevin Spacey, I suppose) break the third wall or maybe I just can't see how the plot (which worked relatively well given the UK's parlimentary system) can possibly work in the US. Regardless of that, I decided that spending Valentine's Day hanging out with a bunch of my political communications classmates and watching "House of Cards" would be more fun than spending Valentine's Day alone.

Mint Hearts (with Recipe)

These mint hearts are a really simple Valentine's Day treat. I made an extra stiff cream cheese mint dough, rolled it out between two sheets of parchment and cut it with a heart shaped aspic cutter (aspic cutters are smaller than most cookie cutters--I usually use mine to cut the centers of linzer cookies).

Wedding Reception Tea

Remember that wedding cake tasting we did? This afternoon tea was for that couple. Instead of the one cake, we catered an afternoon tea wedding reception for 30 people. For this afternoon tea, we served tea sandwiches and assorted desserts.

Football Cookies (and some simple things to do with royal icing)

In honor of the Super Bowl, I whipped up some football cookies. They are made from chocolate sablée dough. Pâte sablée dough is a French sugar cookie dough that makes wonderfully tender cut out cookies as the high fat and sugar content inhibits gluten development even when you roll and reroll the dough. To chocolate the dough up I added some cocoa powder and a drop of brown gel food coloring.