Valentine’s shortbread cookies

These Valentine’s shortbread cookies are wonderfully traditional in flavour – crisp, buttery, delicious and irresistibly cute. To make them, you’ll need cookie stamps and cookie cutters in your favourite shapes. Happy Valentine’s Day!

Ingredients for Valentine’s shortbread cookies:

• 250 g plain flour
• 125 g icing sugar
• 125 g cold butter
• 1 egg or 3 egg yolks, from large eggs
• 1 vanilla pod

Split the vanilla pod lengthwise and scrape out the seeds. Mix the vanilla seeds with the sugar. Sift the flour onto a work surface. Cut the butter into small pieces, add it to the flour and rub together with your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Make a well in the centre, add the egg (or egg yolks) and sprinkle over the vanilla sugar. Mix just until the ingredients come together, then knead briefly into a smooth dough. Alternatively, the pastry can be made in a food processor by combining all the ingredients and processing just until the dough comes together. Shape the dough into a ball, flatten it slightly, wrap in cling film and refrigerate for about 60 minutes.

Remove the dough from the fridge and roll it out to a thickness of approximately 3–4 mm on a lightly floured surface. Stamp the dough and cut out the cookies. Place them on baking trays lined with baking paper, leaving a little space between each cookie. Gather the scraps, knead them briefly, roll out again and continue cutting out cookies until all the dough has been used.

Bake at 180°C for approximately 13–15 minutes, or until the edges are lightly golden. Remove from the oven and leave to cool on a wire rack.

Store the Valentine’s shortbread cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 7 days.

Enjoy!

And here’s the winter version!

Recipe adapted from Pierre Hermé’s recipe for sweet shortcrust pastry.