Valentine's Day is all about fancy dates, expensive dinners, and awkward surprises right!? Well these cookies are quite the gift. You can put messages inside them to your loved one .... like "Be Mine", "Thinking of you", even an engagement ring .... or a "Will you Mary Me?" ...... or an anti-Valentine cookie with nothing inside .... OK, that was mean. Hah, but funny! Let your imagination run wild with these!

Valentine Fortune Cookies

Makes (10) 3.5" Surprise Heart Cookies

Ingredients
2 cups butter, softened
1 cup white sugar
2 tsp Vanilla extract
4 cups all-purpose flour
24oz milk chocolate (finely chopped or chips)

Directions

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 1/4" thick. Using your 3.5" cookie cutter make 30 hearts. 

5. Using your 2.5" cookie cutter, cut out a smaller heart in the center of 10 of the large hearts. These will be your center cookies. All remaining 20 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 1/2 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 1/2 of the chocolate chips. Stir to combine until all chocolate is completely melted. You just tempered your chocolate. Now pour 1/4 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, little notes, bugs, dirt, whatever ...... and 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 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 cookie icing. Refrigerate for 5 minutes until firm. Enjoy!

TIP: This is a very delicious shortbread cookie recipe but if you have your favorite shortbread or butter cookie recipe that you love, by all means use it. You just need a semi-firm cookie recipe.

This was seen on Home and Family on the Hallmark Channel. Watch it here: Heart Surprise Cookie Video