Piped Heart Shaped Butter Cookies - filled with rainbow jams

One of my favorite cookies are butter cookies.  So simple, delicate, and delish.  I even love those mass produced ones that come in the tins that your mom or grandma keeps thread and sewing stuff in!

I had the great idea of making butter cookies but in the shape of hearts for valentines day.

Mix up a simple butter cookie recipe, add it to a piping bag, and pipe some pretty hearts.  

Sounds easy enough right??

Can I tell you how HARD it is to pipe butter cookie dough?? Piping these hearts took like an hour and much forearm strength!

But if you can persevere through it you can fill them with a lot of jellies and jams in fun colors.

or use marmalade - what's the difference between jelly, jam, and marmalade? I'm too lazy to google it today.

I must be getting old because I love butter cookies ESPECIALLY with a thin layer of fruit flavor.  It kinda goes along with my love of bundt cakes as well.  Welcome to middle age!

The hearts were supposed to look like rose shaped icing that is super popular.  However, my kids saw these and asked me if these cookies were supposed to look messy.  I of course said yes because I was just happy to have gotten through the batch without throwing the entire thing in the garbage.

They tasted awesome no matter how they looked.  Tender butter cookie sandwiches made with real vanilla beans with a layer of jelly inside - SO YUM! And I love using the contrasting colors of the jams - even the mint - I've always wanted to try mint jelly!

Although they take a little muscle your Valentine will definitely appreciate the effort - and did I  mention they are super tasty?!

Piped Heart Shaped Butter Sandwich Cookies

by Michelle Clausen February 5 - 2017

Ingredients

• 2 cups of flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup of unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 vanilla bean
• Variety of jelly/jam/marmalades (blueberry, cranberry, mint, orange, lingonberry)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Whisk dry ingredients together.
3. Cream butter and sugar together until pale and creamy.
4. Add in egg and scraped vanilla bead seeds.
5. Add flour mixture 1 cup at a time until just mixed.
6. Pump some iron to build up arm strength then add dough to pastry bag and pipe heart shapes.
7. Bake until edges are just golden about 10-12 minutes.
8. Once cooled spread flat side of cookie with jelly and top with another cookie.

Prep time: 45 minutes Yield: about 2 dozen cookies