The Imagination Tree

Creative play and learning for kids

How to Make Valentine’s Cookie Pops

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Make some delicious heart shaped cookie pops as a special treat for Valentine’s day! These are so easy to make with the kids and would make a great gift wrapped in cellophane with a little love note!
One of our favourite afternoon activities is to bake and decorate simple cupcakes and cookies together and even 2 year old Pop has become really good at cracking eggs and mixing up ingredients independently! There are huge educational benefits to cooking together, from learning to use recipe books, weighing and measuring ingredients, counting out spoonfuls, mixing and blending, transferring to cupcake cases and tins, and understanding the simple science of heat transforming materials.
We had an idea to create some heart shaped cookie pops together (literally cookies on a stick like a lollipop!) for the girls to give as their friends for a treat. We used Nigella Lawson‘s butter cut out recipe from her book How To Be A Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking.
175g soft butter
200g caster sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
400g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
[Use this handy conversion chart if you want to calculate this recipe in cups]

Cream the butter and sugar then beat in the eggs and vanilla. In another bowl mix the flour, baking powder and salt. Add to the butter and eggs and mix. If it’s too sticky add a little more flour, then wrap in cling film and refrigerate for an hour.

After we chilled the dough, we rolled it out on a floured surface and used a large heart shape cookie cutter to cut out our cookies. Then I cut some bamboo BBQ skewers in half and pushed one into the back of each cookie. Just to make it secure I added a little extra cookie dough over the top (as in the right in the picture above) but I’m not sure it really needed the extra layer as they rise quite well in the oven and surround the sticks quite well.

We cooked them for 10-12 minutes at 180 degrees C (350 degrees F). This recipe made about 20 medium-large cookie pops. 
After they cooled we decorated them with pink icing and LOTS of sprinkles!
To make the icing:
300g icing (confectioner’s) sugar
2 tablespoons of hot water
food colouring
Mix together to form a paste and add food colouring. Add more water to get the right consistency. It should be thick yet runny, and possible to drip off a spoon and spread across the cookies. We didn’t follow the recipe and just made it up as we went along, which is quite fun as an experimental investigation with kids!
We left them to set dry for an hour and then tied some ribbon and took them to give out to some of their buddies! They would look gorgeous wrapped in cellophane with a big bow too! Or presented in a big bunch like some edible heart shaped flowers. Yum!
What they are learning while they play:
science: changing states of material, mixing, cooking, rising
literacy: following recipes, understanding that text carries meaning, real life application of books 
maths: counting out cups and spoons, weighing and measuring, recognising numbers
motor skills: mixing, stirring, spooning, transferring, spreading
phse: confidence, independence, seeing a project through, making and sharing gifts with friends
Cakie: 4.4
Pop 2.10
Bean 11 mos

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Comments

  7. Wow. There is a lot of crazy comments above. Are those spam?

    ANyway, I really love this! My daughter is going to too! Can wait to try this.

    Johanna

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