Heart-Shaped 8-Bit Valentine Cookies

I'm a gamer at heart. I've been playing video games since I was 5, and for ten years, was a video game journalist. I went to E3 every year, I wrote about games for Electronic Gaming Monthly, I appeared occasionally on G4. You know, when that was a thing. I love Castlevania, Bioshock, everything by developer Rusty Lake, and pretty much any games with a mythological bent. I also love cookies.

1. Make the red and black royal icing. Set these aside for a few hours so they can deepen in color. 2. Make sugar cookie dough and roll it out until it's ¼" thick. 3. Then, use this 8-bit heart cookie cutter by Nerdy Nummies' Rosanna Pansino to stamp out your Valentine hearts. 4. Bake the cookies until the edges are a light golden brown. Let them cool completely before decorating with royal icing.

5. Fit a piping bag with a coupler and a piping tip. Fill the piping bag with black royal icing. Pipe an outline that follows the shape of the 8-bit cookie. Let dry. 6. Fill a prepared piping bag with red royal icing and pipe a red line inside the heart's black outline. Then, starting at the top of the heart and working horizontally, fill the inside of the cookie with icing. Let dry. 7. Fill a prepared piping back with white royal icing and write on your favorite video game character's name.

– Keep your piping tip just above the cookie. You want a line of icing that falls on the cookie. You don't want to drag the tip across the cookie.

– Fill in any icing holes with more royal icing or by gently moving the icing using the scribe tool.

– If your icing is too thick, it won't pipe well. (See the Dante and Peach cookies.) Place it back in the mixer and add 1 teaspoon of water.

Swipe up for the full recipe!