I ♥ Cookies...

  Photo by David Escalante

Shortbread?... good.  Espresso?... good.  Chocolate?... GOOD.  What's not to like?

Needlessly to say, we LOVED these chocolate dipped, heart-shaped, espresso shortbread cookies.  I stumbled upon this recipe over at the Cream Puffs In Venice blog while perusing my RSS feeds one glorious day shortly before Valentine's Day.  I tried out the recipe which she got at Fine Cooking, and they turned out fabulously.  We ended up packing them up in clear cellophane bags and attaching Elliott's finger-painted Valentine's and giving them to our friends.

I made a few changes to the original recipe...  I tempered my chocolate and I used sea salt instead of regular because I like that extra saltiness you get in shortbread when you use a bigger grain of salt.  I chose to use Peet's Italian Espresso roast (which was amazing) and Guittard semisweet chocolate.  Go Guittard!  

Oh!  And David stepped up and saved the day, because after the dough was ready to be cut and it was midnight or something and the kids were in bed and we couldn't go out, I realized that I didn't have a heart-shaped cookie cutter.  I was determined to have my cookies heart-shaped and was about to whip out my paring knife and carve the hearts out by hand, when David suggested that I look in Elliott's playdough accessories...  Thanks be to Sue, who bought him like a JILLION little shapes, (whom I previously had secretly cursed for giving him all of those dang shapes that I have to pick up every time) for lo and behold, there was a heart-shaped

cutter.  I washed it of course...  and gave Dave a big kiss (well, actually, I'm not sure that I did, but I should have).

Seriously, though, if you get in the baking mood soon, you need to make these...

  Photo by David Escalante

P.S.  We forgot to take photos of the finished product after they were baked and dipped halfway in chocolate, so you'll either have to imagine them or make them yourself!