The first time people see these cookies (me included), the first question is: how’d you get the heart in there? I’ve never clicked on anything so fast when Deb posted them last February, and slowly a light went on in my brain when I saw how the whole thing worked. I saved them for this Valentine’s Day and was excited to see if I could make mine as cute as hers.

Basically what you’re doing here is making your own log of ‘slice n’ bake’ cookie dough. You form the centre heart column first, by marbling pink and red dough together, rolling it out, and stamping out a bunch of little hearts and stacking them together. The plain cookie dough gets pressed, shaped and rolled around the heart column, and there you go – your own ‘slice n’ bake’ log of dough!

I will admit that this is a super fussy and time consuming process, BUT it was fun to work on and I was excited to see if it would all work out when I started to slice my log. As the best bonus, these actually taste fantastic as well: nice and crisp, buttery and vanilla-y.

Can’t wait to get my hands on some other small cookie cutters to see what else I can create!

Sweetheart Sablés

Source: Smitten Kitchen

Ingredients

  • 2 cups flour
  • 1/3 cup sugar
  • 1/3 cup icing sugar
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, cold, cut into cubes
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1 egg, separated

+ red & pink gel food colouring

+ red & pink sanding sugar

Directions

  1. To make the cookie dough, combine the flour, sugar, icing sugar and salt in a food processor.
  2. Add the cold, cubed butter and pulse until the mixture is sandy, then keep going until clumps of dough begin to form. Add the egg yolk and vanilla and process until the dough forms one large ball.
  3. Divide dough into 2/3 and 1/3 portions. Cover the larger portion with plastic wrap and leave at room temperature.
  4. To form the heart column, take the smaller portion of dough and divide in half, adding red gel food colouring to one half and pink gel food colouring to the the other half.
  5. To marble it together, place blobs of dough in a checkerboard pattern on a piece of parchment paper and pat it flat. Use the parchment to fold this dough mess in half once and pat it back flat. Repeat in the other direction, folding and patting for further marbling.
  6. Roll this pink & red dough into a slab that’s 1/4″-1/2″ thick, slide it onto a cutting board and chill until the dough is firm, about 10 minutes.
  7. Use a small 1″ heart cookie cutter to cut out as many hearts as you can, stacking them onto a column and pressing them gently together after each one while not smooshing the shape too much.
  8. Rest the column on it’s side on top of the parchment, and freeze until solid, about 10-15 minutes.
  9. To form the cookie log, use the plain cookie dough to wrap the heart column, pressing it firmly around the heart to get in the valley at the top. Roll the whole thing until it’s as even as you can get it, then wrap it in parchment paper and freeze until solid, about 30 minutes. You can also leave it in the freezer for a few days (or even weeks) at this point.
  10. To bake cookies, heat oven to 350 and line cookie sheets with parchment paper. Whisk the remaining egg white until frothy and brush all over the cookie dough. Carefully slice the log into 1/4″ slices and roll the edges in the sanding sugars and place on the cookie sheets. Bake for 9-11 minutes, then let cool on the cookie sheets for 1 minute before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.