Heart Shaped Strawberry Cookies and Strawberry Thumbprint Cookies ~ V-day Special

Happy Valentines Day, everyone !!!

Today the whole world is going to celebrate love in their lives. According to me, we should celebrate our love everyday to show our special ones how much we love them and how special the are for us. But in today's busy life, we are bound to do routine work and have not much time to do something special. So, at least not very often but sometimes we should make effort for something special. Valentine's day is one such day, when we try to show our loved ones how much special they are for us. This year, day I made some heart shaped Strawberry cookies decorated with chocolate and some thumbprint strawberry cookies for my kids. They totally enjoyed them and I am a very happy soul after all these efforts whole day. If you want to make some, it does not take much time and effort but gives your special ones happiness...that is what we all want, right?
And for this happiness of your loved ones, it doesn't have to be valentines day, any day is worth it.

Let's move on to the recipe:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

You Need :

All-purpose flour : 11/4 cup(makes 20-24 cookies)
Butter : 3/4 cup(in room temperature)
Egg : 1
Sugar : 3/4 -1 cup(powdered), use as per taste
Strawberries : 3/4 cup, finely chopped
Vanilla essence :1 tsp.
Red food coloring : 3-4 drops
Baking powder : 1 tsp.
Salt : a pinch
Milk : 3 tblsp.
For Decoration :
Chocolate : 50 gms.
Milk : 2-3 tblsp.

How To :

In a bowl, sift together flour, baking powder and salt. preheat oven to 175 degreeC. Grease your cookie tray with butter and keep aside.
In another bowl, beat together butter and sugar first. Add egg and beat again. Add vanilla and red food coloring. Add chopped strawberries and mix.
Add flour mixture slowly into the butter mixture and beat, adding 1 tblsp. milk at a time, until you have a soft dough. wrap it with a plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
After 30 minutes, you will get a pilable dough. Divide the dough in to equal size balls. Take each ball and place it on the cookie tray, flatten them a bit and using your hand, give all of them a heart shape.

Bake for 15 minutes. Remove from oven and let them cool on wire rack. It takes almost one hour to cool down.
Meanwhile, in a saucepan, melt chocolate, add milk in there and with a spoon, stir continuously until chocolate melts evenly. Decorate each cookie as you like. Put them in refrigerator for sometime to set the chocolate before use.

Strawberry Thumprint Cookie :
With 1/2 of the dough, I made these cookies. I filled the cookies, some with chocolate and some with Nutella9the hazelnut-cocoa spread, as My kids love it)

Take each dough ball, flatten them a bit and make a thumb imprint in the middle and put in to the oven to bake.
After 5 minutes of baking, take out the tray and make the imprints again, as after we put them in the oven, the holes will filled up as the cookie starts to rise a bit. Therefore we need to do the second time for final.
bake for 15 minutes. Remove and cool on wire rack. When cooled, filled the imprints with nutella or chocolate, some fills it with strawberry jam, as you like. Let them set and teh cookeis are ready to devour............................