Ingredients:
- 2 cups butter, softened
- 1 cup white sugar
- 4 cups all-purpose flour
Recipe
1. Cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Stir in vanilla; add flour and mix well. (add food coloring if desired to get colored dough)
2. Separate dough into 2 halves and wrap in plastic wrap then refrigerate for 1 hr.
3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C).
4. Remove half the dough from the refrigerator and roll with a rolling pin until ¼" thick. Using your 3.5" cookie cutter make 24 hearts.
5. Using your 2.5" cookie cutter, cut out a smaller heart in the center of 8 of the large hearts. These will be your center cookies. All remaining 16 cookies will be your base and top. Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake for 10-12 minutes until very slightly browned.
6. Once your cookies are cool you will want to melt ½ your chocolate in a glass bowl at 30 second intervals, stirring in between, until chocolate is completely melted. Remove from the microwave and stir in remaining ½ of the chocolate chips. Stir to combine until all chocolate is completely melted. You just tempered your chocolate. Now pour ¼ of the chocolate into a small piping bag with a tiny tip. Pipe a small amount of chocolate onto the BACK of the middle cookie like pictured above.
7. Now stick it to the top of the base cookie. You should have no chocolate squirting out the sides if you did this correctly.
8. Fill your cookie with candy hearts, sprinkles, and little notes then start piping a thin chocolate line on the top edge of the middle cookie like pictured above.
9. Now take your third cookie (and best looking cookie if some aren't fabulous) and put this one on top of the piped chocolate. Refrigerate for 2 minutes so everything is secure before your put chocolate on everything.
10. Spread the remaining chocolate all over the top and sides of the cookie. If you don't want to use chocolate you could also use a simple pink icing. Refrigerate for 5 minutes until firm.