Valentine's Heart Cookies

As much as I like to bake, I'm not always the most creative.  I adore all the beautiful cakes, cupcakes and cookies that so many skilled bakers make,s I try, I am just not that talented.  One day I hope to take some classes so that I can learn proper methods rather than just winging it.

Having said that, I do keep trying, and from time to time I see something that I think I can try.  With the Valentine's season upon us, I wanted to make fun, special cookies for my family, and I wanted it to be something that I could do with our oldest.  In my cookbooks I have all sorts of recipes for great cookies, especially Christmas-themed ones.  I scanned my books and couldn't find "the ror this project, so I headed over to Pinterest to see what I could find.  And I found these :-)

Here is the recipe:

1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 cups flour

2 tablespoons cocoa powder

Red or pink food coloring

1 egg
1 tablespoon water

Plastic wrap

Preheat oven to 350F.  Line baking sheet with parchment paper.

Using a mixer, cream the butter and sugar well.  Add in the vanilla and salt.  Gradually add in the flour.  

Once combined, remove the dough from the mixer and turn it out onto a clean surface.  Using your hands, knead the dough until it comes together.  Divide the dough into three equal sized balls.  (The original recipe suggested using your handy kitchen scale to take the guesswork out of dividing equally - great tip!).

Take one ball of dough and lay it out on a piece of plastic wrap.  Sprinkle the cocoa powder on top and knead, knead, knead until the cocoa is mixed in well.  Set the cocoa ball to the side.  Discard the plastic wrap and wash your hands well before moving on.

Take the second ball of dough and lay it out on a fresh piece of plastic wrap.  Add food coloring to the dough (I used pink).  Knead and knead and knead to work the colouring into the dough, add more colouring as needed to attain the colour you are after.  Set the pink dough aside.  Discard the plastic wrap and wash your hands well before moving on.  You should now have three balls of dough - brown, pink and white.

I found at this point that I needed to put the three balls of dough into the fridge for a few minutes to harden it up slightly before moving on to the next step.

Lay out a fresh piece of plastic wrap.  Place the third (untreated) ball of dough on the wrap, smoosh it down a little.  Cover with another piece of plastic wrap.  Roll the dough into a square / rectangle shape until it is approximately 3/8 inch thick.  Using a butter knife, slice the dough into strips, approximately 3/4 inch wide.  Carefully slide the plastic wrap and dough onto a cookie sheet.  Set aside.  Repeat for the cocoa and pink balls of dough.

You may find that you need to pop the dough into the fridge again - doesn't hurt if it will help you through the process!

Whisk together the egg and water.

Cover your work space with a fresh piece of plastic wrap.  Alternating between the three colours, carefully take a strip of dough and place it on the new piece of plastic wrap.  Brush the edges with the egg mixture (this is the glue that will hold the dough together).  Carefully press each strip to the previous strip.  Don't worry if your strips are different thicknesses, we'll work those out in an upcoming step.  Repeat the pattern until you have used all of your dough strips.

Lay a new piece of plastic wrap on top of the patterned dough.  Using your rolling pin, carefully roll along the top of the dough, both horizontally and vertically - use just enough pressure to even out the levels of the dough and to make sure that each strip is sticking.

This is the point where I enlisted the assistance of my 5 year old.  We took our mid-sized heart-shaped cookie cutter and cut our cookies from the striped dough.

Carefully transfer the cut out hearts to the cookie sheet.

Bake for 9-11 minutes (or longer or shorter, depending on your oven/altitude, etc).  Allow the cookies to cool before transferring to a cooling rack.

Makes approx. 30 cookies



VERDICT:

While these were a finicky cookie to make, it was a fun experience, and my son really enjoyed the whole process.  He also adored the cookies, both their colourfulness and their taste.  They aren't a sweet cookie, actually a good tea-dipping cookie.  The cookies got two thumbs up from the kids.