Ingredients:
2 cups all purpose flour
1 ¾ cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup icing sugar
½ cup + 1 tbsp milk powder
1 ¼ cup baking powder
1 tsp vanilla essence
2 large eggs
¼ cup strawberry jam
1 tbsp water
Icing sugar , for dusting
Method:
Preheat oven to 180C. Grease two baking trays and line them with baking sheet. Beat the butter with an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment for a few seconds until it is fluffy. Add the icing sugar and increase the speed of your mixer. Beat until the sugar grains are fine by scraping the bowl occasionally. Add the eggs, mixing one at a time. Slowly add flour in the mixer bowl and beat it until it combines well and the mixture is fluffy. Using a rubber spatula or a wooden spoon, gather the flour towards the centre and beat it once again.
Reduce the mixer speed of the electric mixer.to low and add the rest of the ingredients. Blend again slowly until it is mixed well. Divide the dough into two equal portions. Lay a plastic wrap on the counter. Take one part and put it between two plastic wraps/sheets or wax paper. Roll the dough out with a rolling pin to about ½ cm thick. Peel of the plastic sheet from the top and then cut out the shapes with a round cookie cutter to get 7cm round cookies. Do the same with the other part of the dough.
Gently press a 5cm heart-shaped cutter into the centre of each round to make heart shapes in the centre. Cut out as many cookies as you can. Half of our total cookies should have a heart shape in the middle and the other half not. Keep aside the scraps. You can combine it with the scraps from the second disc, roll it, cut it again with the cookie maker and make more cookies. Place the heart-shaped cookies on the top of the round shaped cookies. Put jam in a bowl and add 1 tbsp of water. Mix it well with a spoon, so that it would be a little more pliable before dolloping on the cookies. Fill a piping bag with the jam and cut the edge of the bag slightly. Fill each heart shaped space with jam starting at the edges of the hearts and then towards the centre. Don’t fill the hearts with the heart too much. Sprinkle powdered sugar on top of all cookies.
Transfer the cookies to the baking sheet and leave some space between the cookies. Bake the cookies at 170C for 15-18 minutes or until they turns gold, rotating the sheets halfway through baking. Transfer cookies to a wire rack to completely cool. Valentine heart shaped cookies are ready!
Note:
To replace milk powder with fresh milk use:
½ cup milk powder + 2 cup water = 2 cups milk
1 tbsp milk powder + ¾ cup water = ¾ cup milk
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