I will admit it, they are really delicious when baked properly (read: not over-baked). But all of you who have never made these cookies before will be crazy surprised when I tell you the number of ingredients this cookie contains. 4! Yup, how much more simple can it be? Well, in this edition, I will be adding the marmalade, so that will make a total of 5 ingredients to use.
Therefore, Valentines is here.. and for these cookies you will need about an hour to do, a bit of effort, love and.. i am sure your loved one(s) will be surprised and honored.
One more hint- It has been proven that the fresh baked cookie + vanilla scent results in easier real estate sales, but also in attracting men (without them being aware they are attracted). :)
So, let me introduce you to these 5 important ingredients:
Flour (30dkg)
Caster sugar (5dkg)
Butter (20dkg - room temperature)
Vanilla extract (1 tsp)
Red marmalade (i.e. strawberry) (3-4 Tbs)
Add everything but marmalade into a bowl and start mixing it together (by hands). The easiest way is to try and crumble buter and flour/sugar together, all the way until butter is fully incorporated with the rest. Than, start working the dough till it look all one color (no traces of flour or butter pieces). The final product should look like a well incorporated ball of pasta, not cracked and ready to be rolled.
After you have reached the right consistency, wrap the ball in a plastic foil and let it sit aside for a few minutes, while you prepare your working surface.
In this moment, you can turn your oven on to 180°C .
Flour the surface on which you will roll the dough, take the dough out of the foil and work it your hands just slightly more. Shape it in a ball and put in the center of your surface (which should be floured the most). Put some flour on top of the ball and start rolling it with a roller. Every time the dough looks as if there is no more flour on its surface, spead some more and continue rolling. The final thickness of the dough should be around 3mm. When you reach it, your dough is ready to be cut
with the cookie cutters.
For these cookies, you will need a heart-shaped cutter in two sizes - bigger (cca 5cm) and smaller (cca 2- 2,5cm) which can be found in pretty much any supermarket.
Cut out the hearts of the same size out of all the rolled out dough (gather the leftovers, shape them, roll and use again, all the way till you have nothing left). Count out the cookies you have cut and pierce a heart shaped hole in half of them.
As I have made these cookies last night, the photos I did were way too dark, so i decided to use this photo from Corbis instead.
Do NOT bake the full hearts and the pierced hearts together, because they require different times of baking.
Bake the cookies on the baking tray + baking paper and line them so they are not touching eachother. Put them in a preheated oven and bake. The full hearts will need from 5-7min, and the hearts with a hole a little less. But don't rely on time only, take a careful look at the cookies while they are in the oven. They change color very quickly, from beige, to gold/brown which means they are already over-baked. So as soon as the edges of cookies are turning a bit golden, take them immediately out. Dont leave them to cool on the baking tray because it is still very hot and they continue to bake on it, even outside of the oven.
Let the baked cookies cool down, and than they are ready to be filled. Fill them in a way that you put half a teaspoon of marmalade on the full heart, cover it with the pierced heart and swirl around a bit till the marmalade gets enough around so that it can stick the two parts together.
Leave them aside for 1-2 hours, so that the marmalade dries up a bit and sticks the two parts together.
And than.. decorate them nicely and give them to someone who will most surely be appreciate this gift from heart.. because there is no gift like the personal, hand made gift which required your time, attention and love.
A big Valentine kiss to all of you sticking with me still. Thank you and happy Valentines day!
Love, yours
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