St. Valentine cookies

 Happy St. Valentines everyone!
It is still not too late to impress your loved one. Originally, I was making these for my son to take to school. I wanted this day for him to be special. We wrapped each cookie into a little bag, put a card with 'Cars' in it , and today he took it to school for his 'girl friends' and teachers. He was very proud of himself! The girls were happy and impressed. Overall, a big success!

These cookies are quiet simple and easy to make. The patience comes in handy when cutting the forms. I bought mine at the dollar store. You can use any forms you have. If you want similar look, you will need two forms with the same pattern, just one smaller than the other.
I doubled the recipe and it was just a nice amount of cookies to share with friends. I will give you a single amount, which will make about 12 double layered cookies.




You will need:
1.5 cups sifted flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup of butter (or half of the big stick, about 230 gr), room temperature
1/2 cup confectioners sugar, or otherwise known as sugar powder
1 tsp pure vanilla extract

For the filling: 1/4 to 1/2 cup of your favorite jam, raspberry is the best.

1. Beat the butter with electric mixer, until smooth, about 1 min.
2. Add sugar powder, beat some more, about 2 min.
3. Add vanilla extract, mixing for another 1 min.
4. Gently stir in sifted flour. Don't add all flour at once. The dough should be soft and forming a nice ball.

On the counter, roll a piece of dough, about 3-4 mm, thick. Cut the shapes. Transfer to baking sheet and bake for 10-15 min at 350 F., or lightly brown around the edges. These cookies shouldn't be brown on top.
The next baking sheet, cut the big shape, put the smaller shape in the middle, and take only the outside shell, cutting out the middle.
To assemble. Have the jam ready, mine was fairly hard, so I used about half a tsp for each cookie. The top of the cookie, dust with sugar powder prior to sandwiching them. Do not put too much jam, as it will run, once you sandwich the both parts.
Take the bottom part, put some jam, then put the top part, give a light squeeze.
If you don't have so much patience or time, you can simply make both cookies the same size, without the cut out, and sandwich them together with jam. Maybe it won't look as pretty, but it sure will taste just as good!