Sugar cookies are amazingly easy and incredibly versatile. Usually we only make them at Christmastime but I got a bunch of heart-shaped cookie cutters in my kitchen-buying frenzy so we decided to make them in honour of Valentine’s Day.

Here is the recipe we used today, courtesy of BBC GoodFood:

Ingredients
200g unsalted butter, at room temperature
150g caster sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
300g plain flour, sifted

Method
1. Cream the butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer, or use a large bowl with a hand-held electric beater. Beat in the vanilla and egg, then add the flour. Beat until smooth, remove from the bowl, halve and shape into discs. Wrap with clingfilm and chill for about 40 min until firm. Heat oven to 180/fan 160C/gas 4.
2. Dust the work top with flour and roll out one portion of dough to 3mm thick. Cut shapes with cutters.
3. Line 2 baking sheets with non-stick baking paper and lift the cookies onto it using a palette knife. Chill for 10 minutes and then bake for 10-12 minutes until just turning golden at the edges. Cool on a baking rack.

Now, this recipe says to use flour to dust your work top, but last year I discovered that you can use icing sugar instead. The cookies will be really sweet, but they are delicious this way.

Once you’re done whip up some icing with icing sugar, milk and food colouring and decorate as you like.

See the snap above for a sample of our best work today!