When I was in high school, my best friend gave me a set of heart shaped cookie cutters for my birthday one year. Although I’ve used them a few times in the past, this year I really put them to use by making some valentine sandwich cookies. This isn’t your ordinary sandwich cookie, but its a mix of a sandwich and jam cookie. This was one of those projects, that I had the idea in my head, and they actually turned out pretty similar to what I envisioned!

I first found a recipe for a butter cookie online. I found one from food.com titled “Worlds Best Butter Cookie” and no argument here! It’s pretty perfect!

Start by preheating your oven to 300 degrees. Then cream the butter and sugar and salt together.

I added the vanilla and egg yolks.

Then I added the flour. It’s nice that this is a one bowl recipe! No need to have a wet and dry bowl.

This is what the mixture looks like after you beat in the flour. It’s pretty crumbly. I dumped this mixture on a floured surface and began kneading.

Kneading cookie dough is so therapeutic. It reminded me of my days wedging clay in the ceramic studio in college.

I rolled the dough into a log, wrapped it in saran wrap, and stuck it in the freezer to chill. Don’t forget to try the cookie dough (if you don’t mind the raw egg) its so tasty!

If you are going to roll out the dough to cut cookies out, you don’t need to wait long before taking the dough out of the freezer. A few times I left it in a little to long and I had to wait a little bit to roll out the dough because it was too hard.

Roll the dough to about 1/8 of an inch thick. You will need two different sizes of heart cookie cutters. Cut all of your cookies with the larger heart first.

Then, use the smaller heart cookie cutter to cut centers out of half the amount of cookie hearts.

Carefully place them on a cookie tray and then put them in the fridge for a minute or two so that they get cold again. This helps them keep their shape while baking. I baked the cookies in the oven for about 16-18 minutes, until the edges started to turn a light golden brown.

While the first batch of cookies was baking, I took the left over dough, rolled it up, and stuck it in the freezer for a few minutes. Then I took it out and cut out more cookies. I did this until I used up every bit of the dough.

When the cookies were done, I paired them up. One solid heart and one with a cut out heart.

For the cream mixture. I mixed butter, vanilla, a little bit of cold water and powdered sugar. If you want to make a more traditional cream, you could mix vegetable shortening with powdered sugar instead of butter.

I filled a plastic baggie with the cream filling mixture and cut the tip to make a piping bag. I flipped over the cookies with the center cut out and piped the cream onto the backs.

This makes a nice “glue” for your cookie and it tastes great too!

Now press the cookie onto a solid heart cookie and you have the perfect spot to spoon in some jam!

I used strawberry jam, but you can certainly use raspberry, or any other kind of flavor! It might be fun to do these cookies with a mix of different jams.

Lastly, I dusted some powdered sugar over the top of the cookies. 🙂

These cookies are so buttery and flaky! They are also pretty rich, so one is very satisfying all on its own.

I hope you enjoyed these cookies! Comment below if you try making them yourself!