Here's What's Cooking At My House: Heart-Shaped Sandwich Cookies and Chocolate Fudge Cake with Peanut Butter Ganache

Heart-Shaped Sandwich Cookies
courtesy of Family Circle

Ingredients:

3 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
1 cup (2 sticks) butter
1 cup granulated sugar
3 large egg yolks
1 tsp vanilla extract
Jam of your choice
2 heart shaped cookie cutters (2 inch and 1 inch)

Directions:

1. In large bowl, mix together flour, baking powder and salt
2. In second bowl, beat butter and sugar until creamy, 3 minutes.
3. Beat in yolks and vanilla
4. On low speed, beat in flour mixture in 3 batches, until dough forms. Divide the dough in half, cover and refrigerate for 1 hour.
5. Grease baking sheets on floured surface, roll half of dough to 1/8 inch thickness with a 2-inch heart-shaped cutter, cut out cookies.
6. Place on baking sheets. Gather scraps together, reroll, cut out more cookies for total of 40 cookies. Refrigerate 20 minutes.
7. Heat oven to 350 degrees
8. Bake in 350 degree oven for 8 minutes. Don’t let rown. Let cookies stand on baking sheet for 1 minute. Remove cookies to wire racks. Let cool.
9. Roll out remaining dough. With 2-inch heart shaped cutter, cut out 40 cookies, then use 1 inch heart shaped cutter to cut centers out of cookies.
10. Bake bite size cookies for 6 minutes and larger cookies for 8 minutes.
11. Put jam on whole heart and top with cut-out heart. Ice bite-size cookies if desired.

Chocolate Fudge Cake with Peanut Butter Ganache