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

  1. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt.
  2. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, about 3-4 minutes.
  3. Beat in the egg and vanilla.
  4. Add the flour mixture and mix again just until dry ingredients are incorporated.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.