Valentine's Cookies
Snowed in today? How about baking some cookies for tomorrow. If you don't have the jelly, any red jelly, even strawberry will work. Refrigerated sugar cookie dough will work also, just dust with flour when rolling out the dough. If you don't have a heart-shaped cookie cutter, use a small juice glass to cut out a circle and pinch the top downward to make the heart shape.
If you're like me, every year you dread giving the same chocolate heart with what we call "the mystery chocolate". We call it that because you never know what's inside the tasty morsel until you bite into it. After a day, the beautiful chocolate heart filled with candy has a bite taken out of each piece. Not very romantic at this point so I always melt them down for cookies. Flowers are lovely the first day, then start to droop and get very sad-looking. Besides, the price of flowers is out-of-control this year. I'd rather you buy me seeds to start my Summer garden.
How about trying something different this year? A box of homemade Linzer Tart Heart Cookies filled with raspberry jam or butter cookies dipped in chocolate and decorated with Valentine's sprinkles? This is easy, adorable, and very tasty.
Linz is the third largest city in Austria and home of the renowned Linzertorte. A Linzertorte is a tart, traditionally made of a rich buttery dough accentuated by almonds, lemon zest, and cinnamon. My modern twist is to make them into heart-shaped cookies, kissed with powdered sugar and dusted with almond powder (almonds ground in a food processor- pictured in the right center of the heart). Did you know that the center of a Linzer Cookie is known as the Linzer Eye?
The Linzertorte is one of the oldest known tarts with a recipe discovered in an Austrian abbey from 1653. Of course, I had to put my twist on the torte and make it easier to bake.
Let's get baking, you'll need: 350 degrees bake: 8 mins.
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 sticks of butter (soften)
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp almond extract
1 egg
Raspberry jam (for filling)
Powdered Sugar (for dusting on top)
Almond Powder (almonds in food processor)
1 glass of red wine for the baker
Combine and sift the dry ingredients and set aside. Cream the sugar and butter together. Add the egg (scrabble it before adding to the butter mixer, it ensure that it's incorporated easier) and the almond extract. Gently, introduce the dry ingredients into the wet. Do not over mix or you will have a tough cookie! Spread out on a floured board and roll out until they are 1/2"' thick. You want them a little thicker to be able to hold up to the jam.
Invest in good cookie cutters and you'll have them forever. I use
my 5 piece heart cookie cutters and make sure they are kept together so that when I need them they're waiting for me.
Once the dough is rolled out, use a large cutter and cut out a heart cookie. With a small cutter, go back into the same cookie and cut out a smaller heart in the center, making the Linzer Eye.
You'll notice my cut-out cookies are not perfect, nothing in my kitchen is perfect. I like to tell everyone that it has my signature on each cookie so you know that I made them with love. They're covered with powdered sugar, and you'll never know that the heart wasn't perfectly cut. That will be our little secret and this is when I pour myself a glass of red wine to complete the cookies. It's not mandatory for the recipe, but a glass of wine makes this blogger a happy baker!
Roll out and cut an equal amount of sold heart cookies for the bottom of the Linzer Cookie.
Bake for approximately 8 minutes - do not allow the cookies to brown. When they are cooling, on the bottom heart, use your finger to make a dimple in the cookie.
This will allow you to put more raspberry jam on the cookie before topping it. Who doesn't like raspberry jam? I never said these were low-calorie cookies, but it's Valentine's Day, no worries.
Once the cookies are cooled, put the tops on a tray and dust them with powdered sugar. The cookies are fragile, so use a light touch when handling them. Put about 1/2 tsp of raspberry jam in the dimple of the bottom cookie. Lift the top from the side (so you don't get fingerprints in your cookie) and place it over the jam, pressing gently downwards.
Like all my recipes, this is the base recipe. You can make it your own with your "signature touches" on the cookies. I kissed them with almond dust but this would be great with a dark chocolate drizzle or a candy flower at the top of the heart. Strawberry jam with sliced strawberries would also be a great swap for the raspberry jam.
Take the center you cut out dip in melting chocolate and decorate it with sprinkles. They make adorable decorations for the rim of the dish. You can make these ahead and store in a sealed container and put in the refrigerator. Allow them to come to room temperature before eating them.
An espresso or a glass of port wine would be a great complement to these cookies.
Let's get ready for a Happy Valentine's Day and enjoy!