Heart-Shaped Pizza and Other Valentine’s Day Kid Treats

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, so why not plan some special treats for the kids? The holidays are a perfect time to make some precious memories that will last a lifetime. 

To quote Julian Barnes, “Memories of childhood were the dreams that stayed with you after you woke.”  

So let’s make some lovely dreams for your children to hold onto when they’re older!

Heart-Shaped Pizza

Everyone loves pizza! For Valentine’s Day, you can always find a pizza place that will give you a heart-shaped pizza. If you’re ready to make the pizza yourself, this tutorial also includes a recipe for pizza dough that the cook swears is foolproof.

Let your kids get involved by cutting out the pepperoni into heart shapes and decorating the pizza. You can also do a blind bake of the heart-shaped dough to make it sturdier before adding toppings and baking again.

Heart-Shaped Pancakes

Start the day off right with a happy holiday breakfast that’s sure to delight your kids. We’ve done Mickey Mouse pancakes before, but weren’t sure how to pull off pretty hearts.

Thanks to the Food Network, we now know. For this one, you’ll need a squeeze bottle filled with batter. Use the squeeze bottle to trace a heart shape in the pan and then when it starts to set up, fill in the heart with more batter. Voilå!

Here’s our idea: right after drawing the outline, put your child’s initial smack in the middle, and let it set up, too. Then, fill in the rest of the heart with pancake batter. The outline of the initial will show up when the pancake is done.

And it may not be heart-healthy, but you can also fold over bacon into heart shapes and bake at 400 degrees on a rack on a cookie sheet. Heart-shaped pancakes and bacon? Sign us up.

Thank you, Food Network!

Lunches

When you’re armed with a heart-shaped cookie cutter, you can make any lunch a holiday special. Make your sandwiches and cut out the centers, cut out slices of cheese on the side, and serve them with heart-shaped apples.

Treats

For an easy treat, twist store-bought puff pastry into heart shapes, bake and serve them with chocolate sauce or cinnamon sugar for dipping. 

Heart-shaped cookies decorated and frosted are always lovely, but you can also make your favorite regular chocolate chip cookies, cut them into a heart-shape, and serve as is, or cut matching heart shapes from ice cream and make dessert sandwiches.

There are plenty of heart-shaped marshmallow recipes out there, but you can also melt down store-bought ones to get a similar result. This tutorial uses cookie cutters and tops them with sprinkles for a colorful splash in your kids’ hot chocolate.

If you’re more into brownies than cookies, take your favorite brownies and cut them out into hearts. Even better, sandwich them with raspberry buttercream made with real raspberries like this wonderful recipe.

The cook then gives the “tops of the chocolate brownie hearts a little dusting of powdered sugar with a powdered sugar shaker. This not only adds pretty detail but also helps to hide any imperfections made when cutting the brownies.” What a great idea!

Have fun, friends, and happy Valentine’s Day!