Guest Blog: Valentine’s Day Baking

Chocolate Flax Cut-Out Cookies with Strawberry Frosting 

By Kate Homes, Chef & Owner of Carried Away Chefs

This is a fun Valentine’s baking project to make with the kids.  They will love cutting out the heart shaped ‘windows’ in the cookies and assembling little cookie sandwiches.  Parents can feel good about having a little extra nutrition in these Valentine’s treats with the addition of flax and real strawberries.  Flaxmeal adds great flavor to cookies and the cocoa powder keeps them feeling decadent.  If you don’t have time for the frosting you can sub strawberry jam to make a more traditional Linzer cookie.

Chocolate Flax Cut-Out Cookies

1 cup flour

1/3 cup cocoa powder

½ cup ground flaxmeal

½ tsp salt

½ tsp baking powder

8 T unsalted butter

1 cup sugar

1 egg

½ tsp almond extract (replace with vanilla extract if nut allergy in family)

Preheat the oven to 350 ˚f . Have a non stick baking sheet, a cooling rack, a rolling pin, a 2 ½ inch heart-shaped cookie cutter and a 1 inch heart-shaped cookie cutter.  Combine the flour, cocoa, flaxmeal, salt and baking powder in a small bowl and mix well.  In a larger bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until fluffy.  Beat in the egg and almond extract until smooth.  Add half the dry ingredients to the butter mixture and gently incorporate.  Fold in the rest of the dry ingredients until combined, form into a disk and wrap in plastic.  Refrigerate 1 hour until firm.

On a lightly floured work surface roll the dough to ¼ inch thick.  Using the large heart cookie cutter, cut out the cookies.  Take the smaller cookie cutter and cut out a small heart ‘window’ in the center of half the cookies (these will be the ‘tops’).  Transfer the cookies to the baking sheet and bake for 6 minutes, until just set.  Transfer to the rack to cool.  Makes about 16 cookies for a total of 8 ‘sandwiches’.

Strawberry Frosting

¼ cup unsalted butter, softened

1 cup powdered sugar

¼ cup sliced strawberries

1 tsp granulated sugar

Sprinkle the strawberries with granulated sugar and let sit 15 minutes.  In a small bowl, mix the butter and powdered sugar, using a rubber spatula.  Drain the strawberries, which will have released some of their juices.  Incorporate the strawberries into the frosting.

Assembly 

8 chocolate heart cookies

8 chocolate cut-out heart cookies

strawberry frosting

1 T powdered sugar

fine mesh strainer or sifter

Sift the powdered sugar over the heart cutout cookies.  Place 1 Tablespoon frosting on each cookie base.  Top each with a cutout heart cookie to make a sandwich with some of the frosting peeking through.  Serve immediately or refrigerate.

Tags: recipe, valentine's day