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! :) 

Valentine Linzer Cookies

I wanted to make something special for Valentine's day and have always wanted to try making Linzer cookies. I used what I think was a traditional recipe including almonds in the dough.  Some of the recipes called for hazelnuts and some called for almonds. I started with hazelnuts and after burning them all when I was just trying to "toast" them, I resorted to using almonds, which I much prefer anyway.

The Joy of Baking site has a good overview of the history of Linzer cookies and a video tutorial on how to make them.

They didn't turn out as picture perfect as I would like, but they were lovely buttery cookies with raspberry jam inside and a sprinkling of powdered sugar that made for a sweet valentine treat. Next time I'd like to try making them with cutters that have a fluted edge.

My little miss A helped to put a spoonful of jam on the bottom cookie for me to spread and make the little heart sandwiches.  She was excited for when we were done to be awarded a cookie to test!

Chocolate-Dipped Shortbread Hearts

I love shortbread and have made these little shortbread hearts several times before. I usually make shortbread each Christmas with different dried fruit and nuts, but these are fun for Valentine's Day. This is a Martha Stewart recipe and the shortbread itself is very easy to make.  I chilled it overnight and then let the dough come to room temperature the next day.  I used this fun fluted edge heart cutter that I liked more than the straight edge hearts.

I like to make the cookies nice and thick.  This way they aren't thin and crispy and are nice and soft.  The trick is to roll out the dough to a consistent thickness so they bake evenly.

For the chocolate dipping sauce, you just mix some bittersweet chocolate and canola oil together and melt in a double boiler.  I just dredge the edge of the cookie in the chocolate and let them dry on parchment. 

I didn't even let them dry before I grabbed one to have with a cup of coffee this afternoon. YUM.

Conversation Heart Cookies

I've needed a reason to bake lately and have been rather void of any creative ideas for fun baking projects.  When it came to signing up for a treat for my daughter's pre-school class, I would have picked cupcakes, but that was already taken, so I went for cookies.  I instantly knew what I wanted to make when I saw their classroom door. We wouldn't just make heart-shaped cookies, but conversation heart cookies.

Here was my inspiration:

We made our sugar cookie dough a day ahead to refrigerate and let it come to room temperature before rolling out.  We made some royal icing and picked lavender, yellow, orange, pink and green to frost our cookies.

They looked really pretty just like this, but we I simply had to make them conversation hearts.

  It's been done several times before so there was plenty cookies ideas to review out there.  There were lots of fun little sayings you can put on the cookies and we did a few, but primarily used their names for each cookie.  We made all sizes of hearts and used the smaller ones for the kids and the larger ones for the teachers. We did take a few shortcuts in making these, but they turned out just fine (especially for 2-year-olds). We did not line the edges when frosting the cookies. We also did not use the royal icing for piping the names. I had a red gel handy and decided to use that.  It was a little gooey to work with and hard to write with the tube, but it worked.

I bet the girls will be thrilled to give these to all their friends at their Valentine's Day party tomorrow!

Puff Pastry to Palmiers

What ended up as this gorgeous heart shaped cookie glistening with sugar did not start out so pretty. In fact, it started out as a mound of lifeless looking dough that I hoped to turn into puff pastry over the course of a few days to then transform into these rolled heart shaped cookies known as "Palmiers."

It seems as if I'd try to make these pretty little heart shaped cookies for Valentine's day, but the true reason for me making these this month is for my Nan's birthday. Palmiers are her favorite pastry and something I always remember her choosing for a treat. In fact, when I lived with her during college in England, I had several trips to France and would always return home with a bag of Palmiers from one of the French patisseries. They are usually made quite large there, but I wanted to start out small and I love the petite version of these delicate cookies.

You can make these using puff pastry sheets purchased from a grocery store, but I wanted to try to start from complete scratch and actually make my own puff pastry. I used the puff pastry guide in my James Peterson "Baking" cookbook and proved quite helpful.

Here is the mound of dough that I started out with which is sans butter at this point. You scored the top of the dough and let it rest in the refrigerator overnight.

The next day, the scored pieces from the top were folded out and then rolled out. I kneaded the butter into a nice square shape in plastic wrap.

The square of butter was placed in the middle and the dough folds were wrapped around the butter like a little package.

The dough was rolled out to evenly distribute the butter and then folded over a few times before refrigerating again so the butter could solidify more before continue to roll.

The dough was rolled and turned seven times with chilling in between before rolling out the final product of puff pastry. I was hoping I had folded it enough and the butter was even throughout, but I wasn't too sure at this point.

To make the palmier cookies, I rolled out the final dough in granulated sugar and measured it to get a rectangle of at least 9 x 14.

The sugar was so glittery on the ivory dough and I was happy to see all the layers in the dough.

I always thought these cookies were individually shaped into hearts so whoever came up with this method for making these is a genius. The dough was folded in twice with generous sprinklings of sugar in between. Then it was rolled together and placed on its side.

There is the heart shape we're looking for!

The cookies were sliced about 1/4" thick from this log of folded puff pastry and placed on a parchment lined baking sheet.

They baked very nicely and turned out a pretty golden brown with the shiny melted sugar in between the layers of pastry. I was happy that they baked so well as I wasn't sure if my smooshed looking slices would turn into pretty golden hearts like the book.

I hope Nan would be proud of these. I called her on her birthday to let her know I was making them especially for her and I have a cellophane bag of palmier cookies ready to be packaged and sent to Victoria road for her to enjoy.