Decorating a Vintage Heart Cake Cookie

You've probably noticed that vintage heart cakes are having a MOMENT. It seems like everywhere you look, you'll see adorable heart cakes with fluffy borders, ruffles and swooshes and bows and cherries. The more ornate, the better. What's old is new, amiright? So it makes perfect sense that vintage heart cake cookies would follow right behind. But how do you take something so completely extra (as the youths say) and reduce it down to a 4"x4" canvas? Well, it's easier than you may think!

This is the simplest step. Use flood icing to create the base color of your "cake." You do not have to flood all the way to the top and bottom edges of the cookie, since you will be adding a thick border there anyways.

Unlike on a real cake, we won't be able to use an unlimited amount of different tips (did I mention this cookie is less than 4" tall? I did? Just checking), so pick two star tips in very different sizes. This will help us create that small shell/large shell border that these vintage cakes are known for. 

I like to start with the larger border so that I know exactly what space I have to work within and place all of my other decorations within those constraints. Using a PME 6 star tip and a stiff royal icing, use a push-pull motion to create continuous shells. Start squeezing your piping bag and push the shell forward a bit, making the higher part of the shell, and then pull backwards to make the tail. Do the exact same thing for the next shell, pushing into the previous one before pulling backwards. Do this over and over until you have made your heart outline for the top of the cake.

Once you have added the large shell border, use an Ateco 13 star tip to add a matching smaller border inside the outline of the larger one. Try to get it as close to the larger border as you can without messing up any of the shells.

And that's it! These cookies are so fun, and pretty easy to boot! Add sprinkles, royal icing transfers, edible glitter, whatever you like--there's no such thing as "too much" on one of these vintage cakes!