Valentine’s Day Heart Cookies
I had plans to do something really amazing for Valentine’s Day for my beautiful girls….but an earthquake messed up my plans…(true story!), but anyway I think these Valentine’s Day Heart Cookies we ended up throwing together are pretty cute anyway 🙂 Best thing: they are dairy and egg free and the ones at the back are gluten free too.
I ended up making the base for the gf cookies in a round about sort of way as I had a chocolate coconut crumb leftover from my pannacotta dish a while ago, so I just made it into a sort of cheesecake crumb base, but you could easily just mould the crumb into biscuits to start with before baking to save a whole lot of work….
gluten free cookies
obviously I don’t usually feed my baby biscuits and marshmallow….but it was a special day, we had just had an earthquake..and I can’t resist her gorgeous smile and pleading eyes!
- 120 grams dairy free margarine (cold)
- 70 g icing sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (I use the ones with seeds in)
- 200 g plain/standard flour (don't use High Grade)
- Put the margarine, sugar and vanilla in a mixing bowl (hand or machine, it doesn't matter), and cream until fluffy (about 2-3 minutes of steady mixing). Add the flour all at once, and mix gently until flour is just incorporated. You need to use a very light hand and don't over mix at all..it will get tough quickly if you do. Wrap in cling film and refrigerate for 20 minutes.
- Place between two sheets of cling film and roll to desired thickness. Cut into heart shapes, place on a non-stick tray and bake at 175 degrees Celsius until golden, mine took about 7 minutes.
- When cool, top with pink marshmallow and sprinkles.
For the gluten free variation,I used the chocolate coconut cookie crumb from this Pannacotta recipe. I just melted 2 Tablespoons of dairy free margarine and added that to it, it looked like a cheesecake crumb base. Then I just laid a heart cookie cutter over a sheet of baking paper and pressed it in quite firmly, took the cutter off carefully and put it in the fridge for half an hour before piping on the marshmallow.
pushing the gluten free crumb into moulds
rolling pastry between cling film to stop it sticking
For the marshmallow, I use the marshmallow recipe from my candy cane marshmallow recipe (you may want to half it). At the end, I coloured it pink (but left the peppermint essence in because my kids love it..you can choose another flavour though). When it was really thick and cool, I placed it in a piping bag and decorated the cookies in a heart shape. If you don’t have a proper piping bag, just place it in a small plastic bag in the bottom corner, and cut the tip off. Then my daughters just added sprinkles! (obviously check they are ok with your own allergy situation). Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!
Jennifer DeFrates/Heaven Not Harvard
February 27, 2016
Wow, you have such great recipes for so many different allergies! I am going to share your page with my homeschool co-op, we have so many different allergies and moms who need recipes for newly diagnosed allergies.
admin
February 27, 2016
Awwww thank you so much!