A few days ago I got back from my holiday in New Zealand. I still haven't settled back into a normal routine yet and haven't quite stopped buzzing from the experience. We have a phenomenal couple of weeks seeing the amazing scenery, magical wildlife encounters and even geeking out a little. Well, a lot of geeking out on my part. I got more than my fair share of The Lord of the Rings fixes as we travelled the whole country. As a lover of Tolkien and a lover of nature, NZ really covered all bases for me.

During that time, I had almost all my meals prepared for me. We had a few days where we bought salads and breads and avocado and had our own little picnic, but there wasn't much preparation needed on our part. After a while, I really started to miss it. Every time I saw an amazing cake or pastry I just wanted to bake. Before I left, I was getting really over the whole cooking thing, so the holiday came at a good time.

We arrived back home just in time to celebrate Valentine's Day and, quite soon, our anniversary. Celebrating it away from homw would have been loads of fun, but at home I get to bake. I have a huge To Bake list, but it was fitting to begin with some baked goods for the love of my life.

Since I'll be making something more substantial for our anniversary quite soon, I went with something smaller for Valentine's Day. Decorated sugar cookies are something I want to dedicate a bit of time to trying and perfecting this year. Part of this motivation is to get better at piping. It's easier to practise on cookies than on cakes: they take less time to make and disappear much quicker. I've done royal icing transfers once or twice before, but have yet to enter the world of sugar cookies. Valentine's Day made for a good excuse.

These cookies are a chocolate recipe I'm familiar with. It tastes great and holds shape well, and gives a little extra flavour than plain sugar cookies. They're decorated with royal icing to look like envelopes (hopefully).

I made 6 in total, one for every year he has been my Valentine.

I left them on the dining room table with the note for when he got home from work. He took me out to one of our favourite restaurants for dinner and we had a lovely night. We're not huge on the whole Valentine's Day deal, but it does give us an excuse to do something a little extra special for one another.

Here's the recipe for the chocolate cookies. I used half this recipe for the 6 cookies, plus some extra tid bits. To ice them, I got really lazy and used a just-add-water packet royal icing. They can be decorated with just about any icing you desire.

You'll find the printable version of this recipe here.