Valentine's Day Strawberry Shortbread

I found this receipe back during the Christmas holidays and thought it would be really good for Valentine's day.  Well Valentine's day is here so I made these yummy little cookies this morning for my Valentine.

I like shortbread cookies because they do not have many ingredients and not very sweet, but nice and buttery and flaky.

These cookies are made in stages.  So do part of it and go off and do something else and then come back for the next part.  Start with 2 softened sticks of butter.

Add 2 Tablespoons of strawberry preserves.  If there are any large chunks of strawberries chop the up.

Add 1/2 teaspoon of almond extract.

Mix those items really well until the butter is nice and fluffy.

Then place on plastic wrap or wax paper and roll into a log.

Close it up tight and place in the freezer for an hour or two to firm back up.

When the butter mixture is cold and firm you can start on the rest of the cookie.  Start with 2 2/3 cups all purpose flour

Add 1/2 cup sugar

Add 1/8 teaspoon of salt.

You can mix this by hand and cut the butter in with a pastry cutter but I decided to use the food processor.  Put the dry ingredients in.

Take the butter out of the freezer.

Cut it into pieces.

Add it to the food processor and pulse until cut in really well.  Scrap down the sides every so often.

The dough is all worked together.

Divide the dough into pieces and roll out on a floured surface.

You can use whatever shape you want but because it is Valentine's day I used heart shapes.  I like this frilly heart.

I used three sizes of heart shapes.  Place in a preheated 325 oven for about 12 minutes.  I started them out for 10 and checked and I had to add the additional 2 minutes.

While they are baking you can mix the glaze that goes across them.  I was out of milk but I had cream so I used that.  It tasted fine.

Start with a heaping tablespoon of the strawberry preserves.  Place in the microwave for a few seconds until it has melted.

I stirred it a little to break it up some.

Add 1 tablespoon milk

I mixed that well.

Add 2 cups of powdered sugar.

And start mixing.  I added a little water to help thin it out until it was the consistancy I wanted.  It reminds me of the icing on strawberry cake only not as pink.

Let the cookies cool completely so go and do something else and then come back to finish them up.

Once they were cooled I put the icing in a zip lock back so it would be easier to drizzle it across the cookies.  Snip the end of the bag just a little so you will only have a small stream.

Just go back and forth across the cookies until you have as much icing as you want on them.

The cookies have been iced now.  Let the icing harden a little before you stack them.

I have some on a pretty Valentine plate ready for dinner tonight.

Happy Valentine's Day from the Grobmyers.

Strawberry Shortbread recipe

2 tablespoons strawberry preserves
1 cup butter softened
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
2 2/3 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt

Strawberry Glaze Recipe

1 tablespoon strawberry preserves
2 cups powdered sugar
1 tablespoon milk