Valentine's Cookiepocalypse

When I was in college, I took a solo weekend trip to a museum in Lausanne, Switzerland called "La Musee de L'Art Brut," which was full of outsider art made by people in prisons and insane asylums. A lot of the art seemed...pathology-specific. You could almost diagnose the insanity by looking at the artwork: a hand-crocheted lace dress made of loose threads collected from asylum bedsheets; pictures of sporting events in stadiums with each member of the audience carefully, individually drawn by hand; a large, wooden mechanical chicken. I was thinking of this artwork while making the above-pictured Valentine's cookies for my kids' classmates. It is beyond debate that there is something a bit off about me upstairs, and this project is the pure manifestation of my compulsiveness, desire to please, and willingness to engage in self-punishing activities, especially if they result in a tasty dessert.

The cookies are also my personal political stand on what I feel to be the utter assiness, for lack of a better word, of commercially-produced Valentine cards, which no longer even include a separate paper envelope - you just fold them and insert a tab into a slot. These, to me, are anti-Valentines, proclaiming, "I care so little about you that I can't even be bothered to lick an envelope on your behalf." My cookies, on the other hand, boldly state, "I am obsessed with you. A stalker. You may want to take out a restraining order."

This project is WAY more for me than for my children, I freely admit. I have always wanted to try my hand at royal icing, which is made with meringue powder, confectioner's sugar and water and makes the glossy smooth surface you see on the cookies they sell at places like Starbucks for three dollars apiece. It turned out to be easy. No cooking at all. You just mix a pound of powdered sugar, five tablespoons of meringue powder (which they sell in the amazing cake-decorating aisle at the Hellmouth known as Michael's Craft Store) and a "scant" half-cup of water (this instruction always makes me mentally substitute "scanty" and imagine that I am required to prepare the recipe in a pair of granny undies and an apron). I added some Meyer lemon juice to the liquid to give my frosting some flavor and tartness (which is, admittedly very subtle. When your recipe includes a pound of sugar, that's the flavor that dominates). The cookies look wicked awesome, and I now feel confident enough in my royal icing skillz to experiment with more Whole Foods-bakery-esque cookies. Also: I actually dislike Valentine's Day with a force that cannot be overstated, but heart-shaped desserts are its one redeeming feature.

PS the one that says "Sweet Cheeks" is for my husband. That is all.