I started brainstorming for a Valentine’s Day Treat Box as soon as Christmas was over. I loved my Christmas boxes so much, so I wanted to do a version with various heart shaped/pink/red treats to spread a little love. I’ve always loved baking for Valentine’s Day, because there’s none of the pressure or urgency of Christmas baking (admittedly, this is usually self-imposed during non-pandemic times) and I usually just make what I want and pass it out to my various Galentines and co-workers.
I was going to sell these boxes to raise some money for charity, but with the province shut down yet again, I felt weird about having people come from all over the GTA to pick them up. Instead I had a fun week baking everything leading up to Valentine’s Day, and then packing up the boxes on the weekend and doing surprise drop-offs to friends and family.
So what made the cut for the boxes? The easiest selection was heart-shaped sugar cookies. This is a tradition I have going back almost 10 years where I would make these cookies and bring them in to work for my favourite co-workers. For the Valentine’s box, I used the marbled icing technique from Chel Sweets, which was pretty fitting since they actually look tie-dyed (the official aesthetic of quarantine).
Valentine’s Day calls for some decadent chocolate treats, so I also included the Baked Brownie with My Favourite Salted Caramel swirled inside and on top, and Chocolate Nutella Linzer Cookies that I saw on Girl Versus Dough at Christmastime (recipe coming up below).
My last, and most controversial, choice was Red Velvet Cheesecake Swirl Brownies. Yes, I am against red velvet as a life choice, but I couldn’t resist them in this box to work with my Valentine’s Day colour palate: a pink treat, a red treat, and two chocolate treats. Perfect.
I had a fun morning driving around making surprise treat drops, before returning home for a boozy Valentine’s Day FaceTime call with my friends. Can’t wait to do that in person next year!
Chocolate Nutella Linzer Cookies
Source: Girl Versus Dough
Ingredients
- 1/2 cups flour
- 3/4 cup cocoa powder, sifted if it’s lumpy
- 3/4 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp salt
- 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) butter, room temperature
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 tsp vanilla
+ Nutella for the filling and coarse white sparkling sugar for topping
Directions
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt.
- In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, about 3-4 minutes.
- Beat in the egg and vanilla.
- Add the flour mixture and mix again just until dry ingredients are incorporated.
- Divide the dough in half and place each half on a sheet of plastic wrap. Form into a disc, wrap tightly, and chill for at least an hour.
- Roll out dough to 1/8″ thickness on top of a large piece of parchment paper. Slide onto a cookie sheet and place in the fridge to chill for 30 minutes. Repeat with second disc of dough.
- Preheat oven to 350. Remove a piece of dough from the fridge and place on the counter (on top of the parchment paper you rolled it out on). Line the cookie sheet with a fresh sheet of parchment. Use a 2″ cookie cutter to punch out cookies and place them on the cookie sheet. They won’t spread too much so they just need to be about 1″ apart. Use a small piping tip to punch circles out of half the cookies, and sprinkle those ones with sparkling sugar. Bake cookies for 8-10 minutes.
- When cookies are all baked and cooled, use an offset spatula to spread Nutella on the whole cookies, and top with a cookie with a cut-out.
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