Would you be my Valentine?

A day of love..

I'm never big on Valentine.. I usually tends to avoid having a traditional Valentine's day candlelight dinner. It has been over-commercialized, highly overrated for my taste. Everywhere will be fully booked, restaurants will dictate us with their set menus (what happenned to freedom of choice?) A nice bouquet and hand written card is usually seals the deal for me. One thing about Valentine is the one and only day where I can justify my "demand" of a bouquet of flower from M. I don't know whether it's an Indonesian guys thing or is it just the guys I've been going out with that seemed to have an allergy of buying flowers for their girlfriend. I don't mean to be cliche, but I always loved flowers. I like filling my house with flowers. I always picked up a bouquet or two almost every weekend. After relentless hint dropping, M finally gave up and bought me a lovely bouquet or orange roses.

Only after I became a serious baker that I started giving out Valentine gifts. Heck, it's the best reason to use your heart shaped cookie cutter right? I only made one batch of Dorie Greenspan's butter cookies I love so much. I've always wanted to try making stained glass cookies ever since I fell in love with the cute tea cakes and biscuits made Joycelyn at Kuidaore . Visit her blog for amazing macaroons and detailed icing decorated cookies. Her intricate details will leave you speechless and craving for more.

Stained glass butter cookies
Adated from "Paris Sweets" by Dorie Greenspan

140g unsalted butter, softened
120g sugar
1 large egg, at room temperature
2 cups all-purpose flour

2-3 strawbery or berry flavoured hard candy (I used strawberry flavoured chupa chups), crushed

In a food processor or a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter until smooth. Add sugar and blend thoroughly until mixture is smooth and satiny. Add the flour and mix until the dough comes together. Turn the dough out to the work surface and collect it into a ball. Cut it in half and shape them into discs and refrigerate, covered tightly with cling wrap to firm up. It can be refrigerated from 2 hours to overnight. Just put it out at least 10mins before start working.

Preheat oven to 180C. Roll the dough in between two sheets of parchment paper into 4-7mm in thickness. Cut out the cookies using a hear shaped cookie cutter and place it in the baking tray. Using a smaller heart shaped cookie cutter, cut out a small portion of the cookie and fill with crushed candy. Bake for 5-7 minutes until golden. You can bake it the American way, egg wash it and sprinkle with granulated sugar. But I think the candy centers add enough sweetness to the cookies.

Happy Valentine everyone =)