Linzer Hearts

I found this recipe in Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook and thought it would be perfect for Valentine’s Day.

I made these cookies with my sister for a Valentine’s Day treat. I didn’t have time to spend hours making cute Valentines, so these cookies ended up being my Valentine to everyone who had one.

They are a very elegant, heart-shaped cookie filled with raspberry preserves. The dough is basically a hazelnut shortbread. The recipe definitely does not skimp on the butter, that’s for sure.

You have to grind the hazelnuts in the food processor in order to make the dough. I ended up almost making hazelnut butter, because I pulsed them for too long, no thanks to my sticky buttons on my processor. (I have since cleaned them.) It was crazy to see the consistency of dry nuts turn into almost a smooth oily butter. I almost would like to try making some sort of nut butter now just see the transformation again.

Fortunately I ended up having two different sizes of heart shaped cookie cutters for the bottom and top parts of the cookies. You could also use the middle mini hearts for just plain shortbread cookies, but I chose to just keep adding them back to the dough and making more sandwich cookies.

They are definitely a cookie looks as good as they taste. I was not disappointed in any way by these cookies, other than they are very time consuming. Though that’s to be expected, especially in baking!