Valentine Puzzle Cookies.
What’s the best thing about Valentine’s Day?
…
The sweets, of course! But if you’re a kid, the next best thing is the Valentine’s Day party, right? And the best part about THAT is goofing around & sharing sugar with your friends.
That’s where these come in. 😉
Puzzle Valentine Cookies! You get to eat your cookie(s), and you’re totally allowed to play with it, too! In fact, it’s ENCOURAGED! 🙂
I made these for little Reilly to take to his preschool class this year. For them, I packaged the pieces up in little loose bundles. (I figured the preschoolers would get a kick out of putting their new treat together before eating it, right?) Once they’ve put together the puzzle, they are rewarded with a sweet message from Reilly himself:
“Friends fit together.” ♥
Easy-peasy, and the cuteness factor is four-fold! What a win!
If you want to make these adorable cookie puzzles for yourself, read on down. I promise it’s super-simple, and I wouldn’t lie to you on Valentine’s Day. (Well, or any other day, for that matter. Just, you know, so we’re clear.)
I found this nifty multi-piece puzzle cutter in Walmart, actually. It’s really a sandwich cutter, designed to even cut the crusts of your little munchkin’s fave sandwich. I bought it over a year ago, but I do see them occasionally still. In my Walmart, it was on a “clip strip” hanging in the bread aisle. Check locally for one in your stores, but if you can’t find it anywhere, I did find THIS ONE that you can order online. (Hint: There are LOTS of other neat sandwich cutters out there, so in full disclosure, I’m not responsible for any extra “retail therapy” that might befall your pocketbook.)
Make your favorite cookie dough & roll out as usual. Cut your dough using the sandwich cutter, but keep it handy, too. (You’ll need it again in a few minutes.) Now, before baking, it should look like this:
And as soon as it comes out of the oven, it will have expanded a little & look more like this:
Here’s the part where you need to be speedy. As quickly as you can while the cookies are hot-hot-hot from the oven, take your cutter & re-cut the warm, soft dough to re-define the edges. Make sure that you line up the cutter as closely as you can to the original ‘cut’ lines, as shown here by the arrow:
Doing this second cut will also trim a tiny bit off the outer edges of the cookie. Those are perfect little strips of baked cookie, best used for “quality checking” the taste, of course. 😉
If it looks like any of the cookie remains connected, use a tiny, sharp knife to cut them carefully. Most of the time, you won’t need to do that step, but it’s best to give you a heads-up, just in case. Let your cookies cool completely before trying to move them to a rack or baking sheet.
Once you’ve made your icing & tinted it to the colors you want, you’re ready to begin decorating. For Reilly’s Valentine puzzles, I switched out the traditional pink for orange, and added a chocolate brown as well. I love that you can change the colors to fit the need or event easily!
Pipe the puzzle piece, leaving a smidge of space at the edges. This teeny bit of space is just enough to make sure that the icing doesn’t enlarge the connecting space between cookies, which is important for insuring that the puzzles still fit back together once dry. Look closely at this example:
Give the piped edge a few minutes to set, and then flood the cookie as well.
Once the flood has dried, you can add embellishments as desired. I made a second set for our family, and I just piped simple hearts & our names. See?
(By the way, it was raining & thunderstorming when I took pictures of the first puzzles, whereas there was beautiful weather for the second set. Please try not to judge the photos against one another, mmkay?) 🙂
Lastly, because the puzzle pieces are easy to separate, bagging them can be a bit tricky (unless you want the loose pieces as I described above). If you want to put them in with the puzzle formed, use a spatula to lift the cookie whole, then easily slide it into a bag. Ta-da!
And that’s it! See, I didn’t lie! The easiest, cutest little Valentine puzzle cookies that YOU can make. Have a sweet day, my friends! ♥
- February 14, 2013 1:41 am
- Author: Nicole
- Categories: valentine's day
Welcome to Life’s a Batch! 
I’ve eyeballed those sandwich cutters a number of times, thinking they’d make great cookie cutters!! These are just adorable!! I don’t know why, but I rec’d 52 e-mails this morning telling me you had a post up (I subscribe via e-mail).
I’m SO SORRY about the mass emails! It was something entirely out of my control – not even my site itself – and I hope it’s all squared away now…
I just bought this cutter the other day to make cookies with. 🙂 Thanks for the tutorial!
Awesome, Emily! Have fun with it! 🙂
Muy originales y perfectas congratulations!!!!!!!
Thank you so much! 🙂
These were difficult to locate at Walmart but finally found them with the baby sippy cups in the baby department. $1.97
Thanks so much for the wonderful idea. After seeing your cookies I was intent on finding that cutter. I spent an hour looking all over the store but finally found them in the baby department. Love it. You are great!
You’re welcome, Addie! I’m glad you were able to find it – they have a couple different styles, and they’re all pretty adorable. Have fun making puzzle cookies! 🙂
Very cute 🙂
Thank you so much, Robyn! 🙂
I have to say that I ordered these and didn’t really know what to do with them! Thank you so much for your tutorial…now they won’t just hang around with all of the other puzzle stuff! We love puzzles..
The Missing Piece Puzzle Company
I’m so glad you took a chance & ordered the cutter anyway! I’m sure you’ll love making these cookies. 🙂
I love the Oscar Party statue cookies and have ordered the cookie cutter. Can you tell me what the base is made of and how you attached the “statue” to the base? Thank you so much!
I used two small circle cookies as the base (the top circle was a size smaller than the bottom one), and the top circle had a notch cut out so that the bottom of the statuette cookie would nestle down into it. I “glued” the 2 sizes of circles together first. I used very stiff piping icing on the bottom of the statuette, then stuck it through the notch, creating the 2-pc. stand. I then coated the entire base with a black royal icing as well. (If I had it to do over again, however, I would use black candy chocolate melts instead!)
Is there a link on here somewhere that has a recipe for the icing? Your cookies look amazing by the way!!!