This is one of the first recipes I have developed, due to watching and reading too much of Bon Appétite Magazine, and my goal was to make a heart-shaped cookie for Valentine’s Day. My first thought was to make palmiers, which are French cookies made by rolling puff pastry or pie dough from both sides until the spirals meet in the center to create a scroll or “elephant ear” shape, but I would pinch the edge of it to make it more heart shaped. I decided against it, because pastry is both time intensive and notoriously finicky. 

I went along with the slice and bake idea, where you’d shape the hearts and have a lot of uniformity. I eventually arrived on a sable-esque dough, where it would be firm enough to take in the hearts. I wanted it to be pink (because Valentine’s Day), so strawberry was a natural choice, and I landed on matcha to have it be nice and marbled as well as making it less one-note. The marbling technique I saw in a recipe by Sue Li on the New York Times Cooking section. 

Strawberries have a lot of water in them, and if a sable dough has too much moisture, it won’t hold its shape. I was thinking about how to reduce the moisture in the strawberries, and it was between macerating or stewing, but the latter would change the flavor of the berries too much. Macerating is the process of soaking produce in sugar, salt, alcohol, or another liquid so that it releases its own juices and becomes softer and more flavorful. I’d imagine that this dough would work with any other fruits; raspberries or peaches would be pretty amazing. I think ginger would also be pretty good.

I am loathe to waste food, so I was thinking about what to do with the remaining syrup, but then I remembered that I only used egg yolks in the dough, leaving leftover whites, which would then make for a nice royal icing. Royal icing is similarly averse to moisture, so I cooked down the syrup, and added it to the icing. The cookie itself is not too sweet, so the icing added a punch of strawberry flavor and really tied it together.

I really like this sort of (almost) zero-waste recipe. I remember I made roast potatoes once with my uncle, and there was a recipe where we fried rosemary and minced garlic, using the aromatic oil as a fat for roasting the potatoes and the fried herbs as a garnish. This recipe has the same sort of energy as that one.

Yield: approx 20 cookies

Ingredients:

Strawberry Dough:

200g frozen strawberries, thawed

2 tbsp granulated sugar

190 g all-purpose flour

4 tbsp blended freeze-dried strawberries

1 tsp salt

6 tbsp unsalted butter, softened

50 g sugar

1 egg yolk

Matcha Dough:

95 g all-purpose flour

1 tbsp matcha

6 tbsp butter, softened

60 g sugar

1 egg yolk

1 tsp salt

Royal Icing

1 egg white

70g powdered sugar

Set strawberries and 2 tbsp sugar aside in a bowl 30 minutes before baking to macerate.

Cream all butter and all remaining granulated sugar until light and fluffy. Add both egg yolks and mix to combine. Divide the mixture evenly between two bowls.

In one bowl, whisk together the flour, freeze-dried strawberry powder, and salt. In the other bowl, whisk together the flour, matcha powder, and salt.

Strain the macerated strawberries, reserving the syrup. Press the strawberries firmly to extract as much liquid as possible. Add the strawberry solids to one bowl of dough and mix to combine. Gradually add the strawberry flour mixture, mixing just until the strawberry solids are fully broken up.

On a sheet of plastic wrap, pat the strawberry dough into a 6×6-inch square.

Add the matcha flour mixture to the second bowl of dough and mix to combine. Pat the matcha dough into a square the same size and place it directly on top of the strawberry dough. Chill for 30 minutes.

While the dough chills, reduce the reserved strawberry syrup by half over medium-low heat. Set aside to cool.

Remove the chilled dough and cut it into four equal strips. Stack the strips into two piles, alternating strawberry and matcha layers. Using parchment paper, press and shape each stack into a log.

Using the flat side of a large knife, gently flatten one side of each log to form the point of the heart. Using the back of the knife, press a shallow indentation into the opposite side to create the top curve of the heart. Wrap tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 5 hours.

Slice the logs into ½-inch cookies. Bake at 350°F for 15 minutes, until set but not browned. Let cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack.

To make the icing, whisk the powdered sugar and egg white until smooth. The icing should fall slowly from the whisk with slight resistance. Add 2–4 teaspoons of the cooled strawberry syrup, depending on concentration, until the icing is pale pink and lightly strawberry-flavored.

Dip each cooled cookie into the icing and let it dry at room temperature overnight.