Celebrating the Sacred Heart with Cookie Cake

I've become a bit of a heart shaped bakeware junkie with the sole intention of having these different pans for celebrating various feast days.  It's a little sad, isn't it. Even more so when you consider that I'm not particularly fond of baking.  Actually, it's not the baking that I have the problem with so much as the cleaning up the mess that I dislike.  Anyway, this post isn't about that.  It's about how we celebrated the solemnity of the Sacred Heart on Friday.

Friday was a busy day for me.  I took Katie to Mass with me in the morning and then had to run and grab soft pretzels for Ellie's class so they could celebrate her summer birthday with her a month early.  So there was a bit of running around in the pouring rain.  Then I had an appointment with my chiropractor followed by me rushing home to take care of lunch for Katie.  I decided to make a heart shaped chocolate chip cookie cake that would be decorated with buttercream icing to look like the Sacred Heart.  Originally the plan was to have it made before the kids got home but that didn't work out since Ellie had a half day.  Then I got sidetracked with eating copious amounts of raw cookie dough and chocolate chip cookies for lunch.  Eventually I got around to making the buttercream icing.

I'm not sure why, but I have the hardest time making red icing.  It never comes out as dark as I'd like no matter how much red dye I add to the icing.  By the time I got done fighting with my mixer that I now realize has a motor issue, I was too tried, hungry and frustrated to do any kind of decorating that was even remotely impressive.  The kids didn't seem to mind.  They enjoyed eating it.