Heart Cookies with Marbled Fondant

I went to an event where I got a bunch of fondant samples to bring home. I typically make my own white chocolate and marshmallow fondant, but wanted to try something fun and different with this prepared fondant that I had to use.  I had seen these fun marbled heart cookies on the cover of Family Circle, of all places. They looked impressive and seemed fairly easy so I thought I would give it a try. 

I used their recipe for the vanilla sugar cookies and while the consistency of the dough was very crumbly, they came together and the cookies turned out quite nice. 

All of the fondant that I had was white, so I got out my gel food coloring to make some black and pink as I was really wanting light pink and grey marbled cookies. I wish I had a lighter pink, but this was all I had. 

As I look back on the image from the magazine, I mixed in more color than white, but I still like the marbled look I got for my first try at this. 

I cut out some small and some large hearts. I even did a few with a scalloped cutter (see last photo) that my daughter really wanted to try. I made a simple vanilla buttercream to be the glue for the fondant heart and then used the same cookie cutter to cut out the fondant to top them off.  I'm not that great at piping royal icing on cookies (at least not yet), but I found this to be a great way to get a really polished look for decorated cookies. 

I loved my pretty heart cookies and packaged them for Valentine gifts for teachers and friends. They are especially good with a cup of creamy hot tea. Eat your heart out! :) 

Flourless Chocolate Cookies

I had a business meeting at a fancy hotel recently. They had a tray of assorted desserts and treats displayed and some of them were gluten free. I typically never try the hotel catered desserts and was not especially drawn to those that were gluten free, but I tried these small flourless chocolate cookies they had out as someone else was raving about them.

OH-MY-GOODNESS - they were decadent. I had two of them (yikes) and set out that evening to discover a recipe to try to create them myself. This version tasted pretty darn similar, but they baked flatter than the ones I had tried.

The batter was very silky and filled with chocolate pieces. I used yummy Guittard chocolate discs so the pieces were larger than typically chocolate chips.

I put Maldon sea salt flakes on some of the cookies and they were definitely my favorites. I'd sprinkle more of them with sea salt next time before baking them. 

I made these on Super Bowl Sunday for an easy to grab dessert treat, but they were so yummy and there were so many of them that I couldn't keep them around the house. I packaged them up to gift to a few people and take to my colleagues to enjoy.