Marbled Heart Sugar Cookies

5 from 1 vote

Skip the fuss of piping and hours of decorating! These Easy Marbled Heart Sugar Cookies are dipped in icing for a quick, gorgeous finish—perfect for Valentine's Day. The dippable icing dries hard so these cookies can be carefully stacked or packaged for gifts. The recipe makes 24, 2.5” heart cookies. Be sure to check out the process photos in the blog post to learn how to do the icing!

Prep Time20

Cook Time10

Rest Time6

Total Time6 30

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: American

Keyword: easy rollout sugar cookies, heart cookies for valentine's day, heart cookies recipe, icing without meringue powder, marbled heart sugar cookies, no mixer sugar cookies, valentine's day cookies

Servings: 2.5" cookies

Calories: 150kcal

Ingredients

10 tablespoons unsalted butter melted and cooled for 10 minutes
¾ cup sugar 5.25 ounces granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 ⅔ cups flour 8.35 ounces all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt

Sugar Cookie Icing:

2 ¼ cup powdered sugar 9 ounces, sifted
1 ½ tablespoon light corn syrup
3-5 tablespoons milk
¾ teaspoon vanilla extract
pink gel food coloring
sprinkles (optional)

Instructions

Make the Cookies:

Add sugar to melted and cooled butter and stir until the mixture is totally combined. It should be thick and shiny. Stir in egg and vanilla until combined and smooth, about 60 seconds.
Add the flour, baking powder, and salt into the bowl with the other ingredients and use a spatula or spoon to stir together until combined. Dough will be very soft.
Chill dough for 2 hours or up to overnight.
Preheat oven to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
After chilling, sprinkle a clean countertop with powdered sugar. Sprinkle the dough as well and roll out using a rolling pin. Roll to ¼” thickness. Cut hearts with a cookie cutter and re-roll scraps 1x.
Note: Don’t toss the scraps! I always bake my leftover scraps as a messy cookie for my kiddos who always want a bite.
Arrange hearts 1.5” apart on parchment lined baking sheets and bake one sheet at a time for 9-10 minutes. Check at 7-8 minutes to be sure you don’t overbake. You want just the tiniest bit of golden brown on the edges.
Cool cookies completely before decorating.

Make the Icing:

Combine 3 tablespoons of the milk along with the other icing ingredients (except food coloring and sprinkles) into a medium bowl. Whisk until smooth, adding more of the milk as needed.
Frosting should drizzle from a smooth ribbon from the whisk and hold its shape on top of the bowl of icing before the drizzles start to soak back into the icing.
If it’s too thick, add a little more milk (1 teaspoon at a time), if it’s too thin, add a little more powdered sugar (a few tablespoons at a time).
Color the icing light pink with the tiniest amount of pink gel food coloring (OR leave white). Adjust amount to suit your taste.
Separate out about 25% of the icing into a small bowl and color a much brighter pink. Now, drizzle a little (not all) across the larger icing bowl.
Hold a cookie upside down by the edges and dip into the icing. You are just dipping the front of the cookie.
Lift and allow the excess icing to drip for 3-4 seconds. Quick flip cookie, gently wiggle it to spread icing, and set on a wire rack or lined cookie sheet to set. Pop any bubbles or swipe away drips quickly with a toothpick.
Optional: add sprinkles immediately. If you wait, the icing will already be too hard.
Drizzle more of the bright pink into the bowl as the marbling gets used up by the dipped cookies.
Allow cookies to harden at room temperature for several hours before carefully stacking and storing. Check icing to for hardness before stacking. I like to place a piece of wax paper between each layer. I’ve stacked multiple layers of cookies with no problems.

Notes

How to Store

To store leftover icing: just lightly cover the surface with plastic wrap (the wrap should touch the icing) and then store in an airtight container in the fridge for 3-5 days.

To store iced cookies: Cookies with dry icing can be kept at room temperature (store in a sealed air tight container) or in the fridge. Store for 3-5 days. I haven’t frozen cookies with this icing recipe yet, but I’ll update when I do. I think it should work fine!

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