Baking Valentine’s For My Valentine’s

Happy Valentine’s Day! Do you like to celebrate? I always love a good excuse for a themed celebration and am planning to make the most of the day of love with the ones that I love. I put together a simple Valentine’s gift for Mabel, gathered the ingredients for a special dinner at home, and am going to squeeze as many kisses out of this day that I can manage. I also took the time the other day to make some special heart-shaped sugar cookies to mark the occasion because what is Valentine’s Day without at least a few cheesy hearts?

A few years ago, I shared my tried and true recipe for sugar cookies. I used this recipe time and time again when I ran a baking side-business many years ago. In fact, I made them so much that I can still recall the recipe from my own head rather than referencing an old recipe card. That chapter of my life already feels like it was ages ago, but every now and then, I get an impulse to set up my mixer, pull out my rolling pin, and mix up some icing again. It’s so familiar that even after all these years, the motions feel like second nature and there is peace to be found in that. I often did some of my best thinking while decorating cookies and creating these Valentine’s cookies for my loves today felt no different. As I methodically mixed the colours into the icing and spread it across the cookie tops, I reflected on the many iterations of love I have been blessed enough to experience in my life.

The commercialized side of Valentine’s Day definitely makes romantic love and gift-giving the star of the show. But when you look past the dozen roses, heart-shaped chocolates, and mushy greeting cards addressed to your soul mate, the heart of Valentine’s Day (no pun intended) is really about expressing - professing - love. There are so many different types of love to celebrate. Whether it be the love you have for a friend who has supported you through a difficult season, the love you have for a loyal pet, the love you feel for a parent after becoming a parent yourself and finally understanding what that sacrificial love truly is, or the bonded love shared within a family, love of all kinds is worth cherishing. And to me, Valentine’s Day is a good reminder to do that.

So I baked some cookies. Not because I felt like I had to give something to the people I love in order to prove it to them, but because it felt right to use my hands to serve them. That’s the beautiful thing about love - it can be expressed in so many different ways.

I suppose I don’t have much more to share, but at the very least, I did just want to share some of my cookie-baking reflections to encourage you to find a way to show someone that you love them today. This day doesn’t need to be exclusive a romantic partner. Maybe you could call your grandfather for a quick chat, send a letter to an old childhood friend, surprise your sister with a coffee card, or give your baby an extra long squeeze. Take this opportunity to express - no, profess! - the love you have for those around you.

I made a whole video about the process of making these cookies, including some of these thoughts about Valentine’s Day. It’s a little bit different than the style of some of my regular videos, but I felt really inspired by trying something slower, more intentional, and contemplative. If you’d like to check it out, you can watch it on YouTube here and be sure to subscribe to our channel.

For all the love out there -