Valentines hearts recipe!

So tomorrow is the day to celebrate love or drown your sorrows if once again your spending it alone. Valentines never used to be like that for us. Every Valentines day Jack Valentine would pay a visit. We would hide upstairs and wait for him to ring the doorbell. By the time we ran downstairs Jack Valentine would be long gone and he would have left each of us a brown paper bag full of goodies. Usually notebooks, pencils and a love heart chocolate. Being a child we innocently believed it and I still have magical memories of Jack Valentine.

Tomorrow I will be cooking a Valentines meal. It will be our third together and the end of the month marks our four year anniversary.

I baked these vanilla hearts, which would make a perfect gift to put in a Jack Valentine bag for children, give to your loved one or eat yourself!

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:

325g plain flour

200g chilled salted butter

125g/4½oz golden caster sugar

2 tsp good-quality vanilla extract

2 large free range egg yolks

100g chocolate, melted

1. Place the flour in a bowl, cut up the butter and add to the bowl. Mix together to make breadcrumbs. (Do this by rubbing the butter into the flour.)

2. Add the vanilla extract, egg yolks and sugar. Mix together to form a dough.

3. Chill the dough for around an hour.

4. Preheat the oven to 180ºC/Gas 4 and lightly grease 2 large baking sheets.

5. Roll the dough out on a floured surface and cut out hearts with a heart cutter, place onto the baking sheets.

6. Bake for around 10 minutes until golden brown, keep and eye on them so they don't burn.

7. Once cooked leave to cool.

8. Serve the hearts with the chocolate and let people dip for themselves. If you are giving them as a gift dip in chocolate and wait for the chocolate to set before wrapping.

♥