8-Bit Valentine Cookies

Make heart-shaped 8-Bit Valentine Cookies for Valentine’s Day and decorate them with the names of your favorite video game characters!

I’m a gamer at heart. I’ve been playing video games since I was 5, and for ten years, was a video game journalist. I went to E3 every year, I wrote about games for Electronic Gaming Monthly, I appeared occasionally on G4. You know, when that was a thing.

I love Castlevania, Bioshock, everything by developer Rusty Lake, and pretty much any games with a mythological bent.

I also love cookies.

And Valentine’s Day. I love the cheesy puns and the over-the-top cuteness of the holiday, so I decided to combine all of these loves into one recipe and make heart-shaped 8-Bit Valentine Cookies decorated with the names of my favorite gaming characters.

To make them, you simply need a little bit of patience, baked sugar cookies, and royal icing.

How to Make 8-Bit Valentine Cookies

1. Make the red and black royal icing. Set these aside for a few hours so they can deepen in color.
2. Make sugar cookie dough and roll it out until it’s ¼” thick.
3. Then, use this 8-bit heart cookie cutter by Nerdy Nummies’ Rosanna Pansino to stamp out your Valentine hearts.
4. Bake the cookies until the edges are a light golden brown. Let them cool completely before decorating with royal icing.
5. Fit a piping bag with a coupler and a piping tip. Fill the piping bag with black royal icing. Pipe an outline that follows the shape of the 8-bit cookie. Let dry.
6. Fill a prepared piping bag with red royal icing and pipe a red line inside the heart’s black outline. Then, starting at the top of the heart and working horizontally, fill the inside of the cookie with icing. Let dry.
7. Fill a prepared piping back with white royal icing and write on your favorite video game character’s name. Except Alucard. He’s spoken for.

Tips for Making Valentine Cookies

• Keep your piping tip just above the cookie. You want a line of icing that falls on the cookie. You don’t want to drag the tip across the cookie.
• Fill in any icing holes with more royal icing or by gently moving the icing using the scribe tool.
• If your icing is too thick, it won’t pipe well. (See the Dante and Peach cookies.) Place it back in the mixer and add 1 teaspoon of water.
• If your icing is too thin, return it to the mixer and add ½ tablespoon of meringue powder and ¼ cup confectioner’s sugar.
• Let the cookies dry completely before stacking or sharing them.
• Spray the valentine cookies with shellac if you don’t want to eat them but want them to last for a long time.

Tools You’ll Need to Make 8-Bit Valentine Cookies

• Rosanna Pansino 8-bit heart cookie cutter — I used this to create the cookie shape.
• Decorating bags — I fill these with royal icing.
• Round decorating tips — I used Wilton #1, and Wilton #2 to pipe the royal icing onto the cookies.
• Icing bag ties — I use these to hold the royal icing in the bag so things get less messy.
• Tip couplers — I use these to hold on the decorating tips.
• Food coloring — I used Americolor’s Red Red and Jet Black.
• Scribe tool — to fill in any holes in your icing and move icing around as needed.
• Baking sheets, parchment paper, and a rolling pin.

8-Bit Valentine Cookies

5 from 5 votes

Print Recipe

Make heart-shaped 8-Bit Valentine Cookies for Valentine's Day and decorate them with the names of your favorite video game characters!

Prep Time: 2 hours hrs

Cook Time: 15 minutes mins

Total Time: 2 hours hrs 15 minutes mins

Servings: 20 cookies

Ingredients

• 1 sugar cookie recipe

Royal Icing

• 3 Tbsp. meringue powder
• 4 cups powdered sugar
• 6 Tbsp. water
• 1 bottle red food coloring
• 1 bottle black food coloring

Instructions

Royal Icing

• Place meringue powder, water, and powdered sugar in stand mixer fitted with whisk attachment. Mix for 7 minutes until soft peaks form.
  
• Separate royal icing into three bowls. Do not dye one bowl of icing. Cover and set it aside.
  
• Add red food coloring to another bowl of icing. Stir. Repeat, saturating with dye until it no longer changes color. Cover and set aside for two hours.
  
• Meanwhile, add black food coloring to another bowl of icing. Stir. Repeat, saturating with dye until it no longer changes color. Cover and set aside for two hours.
• Fit piping bags with couplers and a round #1 or #2 tip. Fill with royal icing and close with bag ties.
  

Baking and Decorating 8-Bit Cookies

• Make sugar cookie dough and roll to 1/4" thick.
• Cut out cookie shapes using 8-bit cookie cutter. Repeat until all dough has been used.
  
• Bake cookies until edges are light golden brown. Let cool completely.
• Pipe outline around edge of heart-shaped cookie using black royal icing. Let dry.
  
• Pipe red royal icing just inside black outline. Let dry.
  
• Fill inside of cookie with red royal icing. Let dry.
  
• Pipe character name on cookie with white icing. Let dry.
  

Notes

• For these heart-shaped Valentine cookies, I used a royal icing consistency that's between flood and piping consistency.
• To make jet black royal icing, completely saturate the icing with black food coloring, then wait. At first, the black icing was dark green, but over a few hours, it turned jet black. The red turned from mauve to heart red.

Nutrition Facts

8-Bit Valentine Cookies

Amount Per Serving (1 cookie)

Calories 125

* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet.

Course: Cookies, Dessert

Cuisine: American

Keyword: 8-bit cookies, valentine cookies

Author: Rebecca Swanner

Did you make this recipe?Leave a review below, then take a photo and tag @letseatcakeblog on Instagram so we can see it!

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Rebecca Swanner

Pleased to meet you. I'm the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Let's Eat Cake: The world's first smart, funny lifestyle site for women.

My background is in publishing (I've worked at Parade, Men's Journal, Us Weekly, Stuff, Blender, Beachbody, and more), mostly with a focus in health, fitness, and entertainment. I've also run my own baking company and competed on Cupcake Wars, so hit me up with your baking questions!

For more details, check out my full bio or follow me on Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn.

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