Happy Valentine’s day everyone! What are you doing this weekend to celebrate? Pete and I will be spending the weekend painting our new apartment in preparation for our move-in in May.

In celebration of Valentine’s Day my mom, Liz, and I baked these cute Linzer Heart cookies to give as gifts. We found the recipe for the cookie from Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook. This recipe makes a cookie that is delicate and quite flavorful (from the nut flour and lemon zest). I do want to warn you though, this dough is fairly hard to work with (it may crack), but you just need to be patient and keep working with it to get it rolled out to the desired thickness. To make this recipe you also need to make sure you have two different sized heart-shaped cookie cutters on hand for cutting the “window” on the top layering cookie. The extra small heart you cut out can also be baked and made into nice bite-sized sandwich cookies.

The raspberry jam was made by a recipe that I’ve adapted from various recipes that works pretty well for me and it very easy to make. All you need to do is weigh out 800 g. frozen raspberries, 600 g. sugar, and juice one lemon. Place the frozen raspberries and the sugar in a large pot and cook over a medium-high heat. Stir to ensure sugars dissolve and continue cooking until it reaches 105ºC and be patient because this takes a while! Once it reaches this temperature, remove from heat and stir in the lemon juice. This recipe makes a lot of jam, so what I did was pour some of the jam into a glass pyrex dish (with lid) to use for the cookies and jarred the rest. Making the jam ahead of time, makes the cookies all the easier when you go to make them, plus homemade jam tastes so delicious!

Linzer Hearts (Martha Stewart)

2 c. all purpose flour, plus more for dusting

1 t. baking powder

1/2 t. ground cinnamon

1/4 t. salt

1 c. blanched hazelnuts (I used almonds)

2 sticks (1c.) unsalted butter, room temperature

3/4 c. sugar

2 lg. egg yolks

1/2 t. vanilla extract

1/2 t. freshly grated lemon zest

1/2 c. raspberry jam for filling

1/4 c. confectioner’s sugar, for dusting

In a large bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt. In a food processor, pulse hazelnuts (or almonds) until finely ground. Whisk the ground hazelnuts into the flour mixture; set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with paddle attachment, beat butter and sugar on medium-high speed until light and fluffy about 2-3 minutes. Add the egg yolks, vanilla and lemon zest; beat to combine, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. With mixer on low speed, add nut-flour mixture, and beat until just combined.

Turn out dough onto a lightly floured work surface, divide in half, and shape into flattened discs. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate 1 hour or overnight.

Remove one disc of dough from the refrigerator, and let stand until softened slightly. (This will help the dough from cracking when rolled) On a large piece of parchment paper lightly dusted with flour, roll dough to 1/8″ thickness (I found more success with a slightly thicker dough). To prevent sticking while rolling, occasionally run a large offset spatula under dough, and add more flour to the top or bottom of the dough. Transfer parchment paper and dough to a baking sheet; freeze until firm, about 2o minutes. Repeat with remaining dough (you can stack the parchment and the dough).

Preheat the oven to 325ºF. Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper. Remove one sheet of dough and parchment from the freezer; working quickly, cut into heart shapes with a 3-inch cookie cutter. Cut out center from half the shapes with a 2-inch cutter. Using a wide metal spatula, transfer open hearts to prepared baking sheets, about 1 1/2 inches apart; freeze until firm, about 15 minutes (you can bake the cutouts centers for bite sized cookies, or reroll them to make larger hearts).

Bake, rotating sheets halfway through, until cookies are crisp and lightly golden all over, about 15 minutes. Transfer cookies to a wire rack to cool completely (cooled cookies can be stored overnight in an airtight container at room temperature before filling). Spread the flat sides of the whole hearts with about 1 1/2 t. jam. Sift confectioner’s sugar over the open hearts. Just before serving, top open hearts with jam. Cookies should be eaten the day they’re filled.