Valentines Heart Shaped Sandwich Cookies ♥

I absolutely love baking, and if there's an excuse for me to bake I'll probably end up doing it. I am a girl after all with a massive sweet tooth and a desire to please people through their stomachs. With it being Valentines Day and all, I wanted to make something cute and tasty for my boyfriend and family and thought these were adorable. I got the recipes off of marthastewart.com and will link both of them at the bottom.

Please note, I am from the UK but most of my measurements are in cups. Purely because most recipes online are in cups so I bought myself some cup measures (they are the cutest things, the rose looking bowls in the pictures...I know, they're amazing).

So these are basically 2 types of cookies; a crunchy sugar cookie and a softer cocoa one, and I made life easier for myself by just filling them with some ready made Betty Crocker Icing and some Waitrose Freeze Dried Strawberries.

Altogether this made about 10 big and 16 small cocoa sandwiches, and the same for the sugar. That's a total of 52. Yum. Obviously this will change depending on how thick you make your dough and the size of your cookie cutters.



All the ingredients you'll need are:

For the sugar cookies...
2 cups of plain flour
1/2 tsp of baking powder
1/4 tsp of salt
125 g of soft unsalted butter (I measure this in grams as it's just half a standard pack over here!)
1 cup of sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp of vanilla extract
Red or pink food colouring (I used liquid but am now thinking a gel one would be more appropriate for dough!)

For the cocoa cookies...
1 1/4 cups of plain flour
3/4 of a cup of cocoa powder
1/2 tsp of bicarbonate of soda
1/4 tsp of salt
125 g of soft unsalted butter (the other half of the pack!)
2/3 of a cup of brown sugar
1 large egg

To fill...
Betty Crocker vanilla icing
Betty Crocker chocolate icing buttercream style
Waitrose freeze dried baking strawberries
(You can fill these with whatever takes your fancy! These are just what I chose.)

You will also need heart cookie cutters in a couple of different sizes!

I started with the sugar cookies as the dough is a bit more crumbly it needed more time to set in the fridge.



Start by slightly whisking to incorporate the flour, baking powder and salt. Lots of people sieve their ingredients. I am not one of those people. Ever. All turns out the same to me!
In a separate, bigger bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Next add the egg and vanilla and mix till that's all nice and together.


Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and stir until just combined. Please note that this will not suddenly turn into a beautiful and together dough. You gotta get your hands dirty so get right in there and start kneading until a resemblance of a dough appears before your eyes.
Split the dough into two and knead different levels of red or pink into each. I used liquid and had to end up adding more flour, so gel may be the way forward. Shape the pieces of dough into discs, wrap in cling film and pop em in the fridge for at least an hour.

Now onto the cocoa ones!


In the same way, whisk together the flour, cocoa, bicarb and salt. Again, I did not sieve. Not even the lumpy bumpy cocoa. I know, rebel.
In a separate bowl, cream the butter and sugar, add the egg (I did actually cheekily put in a few drops of vanilla to this as well because that's how I roll).



Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture, stir in then knead.
Split the dough into 2 and roll each out in between 2 sheets of floured parchment paper. I just roll it out to whatever thickness I desire. Do remember it is a sandwich cookie, so doesn't have to be as thick!
Pile these (with parchment) on top of each other, chuck on a baking tray and pop into the fridge! This dough only needs half an hour.

Have a little tidy while you wait, then when time's up, preheat your over to 170 c and go grab the cocoa dough first. This is because it is slightly easier to handle than the other dough, so really the longer the other one's in the fridge, the better!


As it's already rolled you just need to use your cookie cutters and get cutting! Dip them in flour first to avoid sticking, and fire away! Don't forget to have an even amount of each size as you're gonna be pairing these babies up. The original recipe says you should only regroup and re-roll your dough once, but I kept going till my heart was content!


Repeat the process with the sugar cookie dough, (you'll need to roll this dough out in the same way, between 2 pieces of floured parchment, but this is AFTER chilling it) and you wanna get those little hearts onto a baking tray with parchment and into the freezer for 15 minutes before baking.
Obviously it'll need to be done in batches, and I got into a little rhythm of while I was cutting one batch, another was in the freezer, and another was in the oven. I know, organisational skills to the max.

I found that baking them for 10 minutes no matter what the size was worked just fine for all.
Let them cool pretty much completely, which really doesn't take that long, then get decorating!


(I didn't actually end up using the sprinkles or the squeezey icing)


Just use a knife to spread on the icing (be really careful, the larger ones kept breaking in my hands so best to keep these on a surface and spread like you're spreading toast!) then just sprinkle the strawberries on top and lastly enclose all that deliciousness with another heart. I was alternating between the vanilla and the chocolate to ensure even vanilla-ness and chocolate-ness.

And voilà! That's pretty much it. Now just the tidying...and more importantly, the eating!


Hope you enjoyed this recipe, it being my first one and all, and hope everything makes sense! Any questions just give me a heads up!

Pink sugar cookies
Cocoa cookies

Dani Alexandra
Xoxo