1. Add flour, confectioners‘ sugar, and salt to a large bowl and mix to combine. Add the butter in small pieces, the egg yolk, and mix/knead until you got a nice smooth dough. You can use a handheld mixer, a pastry cutter, or your hands to do all of that. Your choice of weapon. Wrap the dough into plastic wrap and place it in the fridge for at least 1 hour (or overnight).

2. Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F). Line a baking sheet with baking parchment and set aside. Roll out half of the dough (leave the rest in the fridge) on a floured work surface and cut out hearts* (about 6cm in size). Place them on the baking sheet with some space in between. Collect leftover dough and roll it out again with some added dough from the fridge and cut out more hearts until the baking sheet is full. Bake the cookies for about 10 minutes – they should only get a hint of color. Take out of the oven and let cool down on the baking sheet for some time, then transfer it to a wire rack and let it cool down completely. Repeat with the remaining dough until you used everything.

3. For the glaze mix confectioners‘ sugar with a little bit of lemon juice – add more if necessary to get a thick and not too runny glaze. Take a small amount of the glaze and color it with food color (in a separate bowl) to your liking. Glaze the cookies. I usually do this with a small spoon because it’s faster than filling it into a piping bag and using that for decorating. Color the remaining glaze with more colors and decorate the rest of the cookies. Let the glaze dry for at least 24 hours.

4. If you want to write something (nice or nasty) on your cookies you can either do that with some leftover sugar glaze, pre-made sugar glaze for writing text*, or you can use a food coloring pen*. That is actually the easiest way to get text onto the cookies.