When you think of hearts in the geek world, usually Zelda comes to mind. Specifically pixel hearts or the heart piece. So when we decided that this month’s theme would be ‘Hearts’, I knew that I would make Zelda cookies.

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Luckily in our Cooking forum, a member suggested a method to make ‘stained-glass’ cookies which would work perfectly for these. With the ‘stained glass’ technique and my go-to sugar cookie recipe, I made Zelda Heart Piece cookies!

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Sugar Cookies:

3/4 cup butter, softened

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cream of tartar

1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions:

1. Cream butter and sugar in large bowl. Add egg and beat well. Add vanilla and beat until smooth.

2. Combine flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt in small bowl. Add to butter mixture in two additions, mixing well until no dry flour remains. Knead it all together with your hands. And when it gets crumbly and you want to give up, keep kneading because it’ll come together.

3. Divide dough into 2 equal parts and flatten into a disc shape. Wrap each in waxed paper and chill for 6 hours or overnight.

4. Discard waxed paper and roll out dough on lightly floured surface. Using a heart cookie cutter, cut out hearts. Now, I had a small heart cookie for the middle but it was still too big. It left a very thin border. So I ended up using a small paring knife to cut out the inner hearts. This is why none of them are the same.

5. Place cookies on greased cookie sheet and bake in 350 degrees Fahrenheit oven for about 10 minutes or until edges are just golden. I ended up cutting 2 minutes off the cooking time since they were going back in the oven with the jolly ranchers for another 2-3 minutes. Cool cookies on cooling rack.

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Candy Heart Centre:

Cherry Jolly Rancher candies

I followed the directions in this video. I crushed up the unwrapped candies and filled the cooled cookies. The only thing is I found a lot of the candy didn’t melt after 1-2 minutes. There would still be some lumpy parts. So for the last couple of batches, I put them in for 3 minutes and they came out smooth!

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I’m very happy with how the cookies turned out. I love the look of the melted candy in the middle and I hope to try this technique again.

Please share your heart-shaped food this month in either the Cooking thread on the forum or use the #igglescook hashtag!

xo Sparkles