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Heart-Shaped Puzzle Cookies

Stacked and tied royal icing Valentine's heart cookies with a rose in the background.
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5 from 7 reviews

These raspberry heart-shaped puzzle cookies are naturally colored and flavored with freeze-dried raspberries and iced with pink royal icing. The interlocking heart pieces fit together like a puzzle, making a sweet Valentine's Day treat.

Ingredients

Scale

For the cookie dough:

  • 6.2 oz (175 g) butter, softened
  • 1/2 cup + 1 tablespoon (125 g) granulated sugar
  • 0.4 oz (10 g) freeze-dried raspberries 
  • 1 egg
  • 7 tablespoons (50 g) hazelnut flour
  • 1/2 cup (50 g) almond flour
  • 2 cups (250 g) all-purpose flour

For the pink royal icing:

  • 1 cup + 3 1/2 tablespoons (150 g) powdered (icing) sugar
  • 1 large egg white (30 g) 
  • several drops of red food color

* If needed, please refer to Baking Conversion Charts.

Instructions

  1.  To make the raspberry powder, place freeze-dried raspberries in the bowl of a food processor and crush them. Pass the powder through a fine-mesh sieve/mini strainer.
  2.  To make the cookie dough, place butter, sugar, and raspberry powder in the bowl of a stand mixer and mix. Add the whole egg, hazelnut, and almond flour, and continue mixing. Add the sifted flour and mix just to combine. Take the cookie dough out of the bowl and shape it into a ball. Using a rolling pin, roll the dough between two sheets of parchment paper sprinkled with powdered (icing) sugar. The dough should be about 2/5 inch (1 cm) thick. Refrigerate for one hour.
  3. To make the pink royal icing, whisk the egg white with powdered (icing) sugar and 3 to 4 drops of red food color (the intensity is up to you) with an electric mixer. Take the cookie dough out of the fridge and spread a thin layer of royal icing with a bent spatula.
  4. Preheat oven to 300°F (150°C). Cut out cookie hearts with a heart cookie cutter and a puzzle heart cookie cutter and place them on a baking sheet covered with parchment. The dough is quite hard; cutting the cookies is a little tricky. Remove them from the cookie cutter by pushing them from underneath. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes. Remove cookies from the oven and let them cool.

Notes

  1. Make dried raspberries out of fresh berries. Preheat oven to 195°F (90°C). Place 1.8 oz (50 g) fresh raspberries on the parchment paper and bake in the oven. Let berries dry for 2 hours, stirring every 30 minutes. Let them cool, then crush into raspberry powder (you will get about 0.4 oz (10 g).
  2. Leave the royal icing white, or make half the icing white and the other half pink. Mix colors, spreading the icing over the cookie dough with a bent spatula, if desired.
  3. The remaining cookie scraps (falls) aren't as pretty as heart-shaped cookies, but you can bake them as well. They are delicious!
  4. Store cookies in a dry, airtight container in a cool place for up to 2 weeks.

Nutrition

Find it online: https://www.bakinglikeachef.com/valentines-raspberry-cookies/