These heart-shaped raspberry shortbread cookies are one of my favorites, mainly because they are delicious all year round. I love bringing them to holiday events, or for a lite treat in the summertime, but most of all I love baking them around Valentine’s Day!
The process of making these is very simple and the recipe only calls for a few ingredients, most of which you probably already have in your pantry – another reason why I love them!
Materials need
Ingredients
- 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 3/4 tsp salt
- 1 1/2 cups unsalted butter (3 sticks), softened
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 2 tsp vanilla extract or almond extract
- 1 1/2 tsp lemon zest
- 2/3 cup seedless raspberry jam
- 1/3 white chocolate
How to bake these heart-shaped raspberry shortbread cookies?
First, preheat your oven to 350° F and prepare two cookie sheets with parchment paper, or use a non-stick baking sheet.
To prepare the dough, mix the flour and salt in a small bowl. Set aside. Now, in a larger bowl, mix the butter and powdered sugar. Then add the vanilla or almond extract depending on your preference, add the lemon zest, and mix thoroughly. After the mixture is combined, slowly add your flour-salt mixture until the dough fully comes together.
Remove the dough from the bowl and press the dough together until you have a smooth ball. Divide the dough into two sections and roll each to about 1/2” discs. Wrap each disc individually with plastic wrap and place it into the fridge for about an hour and a half. To speed this process up you can also put them into the freezer for 15 minutes.
When it’s ready, remove both discs from the fridge and place them onto a lightly floured surface. Roll each disc of dough until it’s 1/4” thick. Then use a heart-shaped cookie cutter to cut out your cookies. Once all cookies are cut out take another smaller heart shape cookie cutter to cut off the center of half of your cookies. Make sure to have the same number of whole heart-shaped cookies as you do center cut-out cookies as these work as the fronts and backs of the cookies.
Place cookies on prepared baking sheets, and bake for 10-12 minutes, until the bottoms and edges are lightly browned. Remove from oven and let cookies sit for about 5 minutes before removing them from the baking sheet to a cooling wrap. (moving too soon can cause them to break and will make removing them from the baking sheet difficult. Once onto the baking sheet let cookies cool for 15-20 minutes before assembling.
Now time to assemble cookies! Place all full-size heart-shaped cookies onto parchment paper or a baking sheet. Then spread about 1 teaspoon of jam onto the bottom cookies. Once each cookie is filled with jam, melt your white chocolate in the microwave for 30 seconds at a time, stirring every 30 seconds to make sure to not burn the chocolate. Place melted white chocolate into a small piping bag and cut a small slit at the bottom of the bag to create a thin tip. Pipe around the edges of each jam-filled cookie before placing your center-cut cookie on top. The white chocolate not only adds flavor but also helps keep your cookies together. After each cookie is assembled add your powdered sugar into a sifter and dust each cookie with sugar.
You can store your cookies in an airtight container for up to a week. Enjoy!
