Chocolate and Peanut Butter Heart Cookies

Looking for a last minute cookie to make for someone you love this Valentine's Day? Grab a heart-shaped cookie cutter (I got mine at Target) and have some fun!

The idea for this cookie came from a friend of mine who's been asking me to make them for ages. He didn't have a recipe for me to follow, just a description for a cookie that someone else used to make for him: a peanut-butter heart-shaped cookie half dipped in chocolate.

I couldn't find anything like this online so I made up my own recipe. When I gave him some to try, he said I got it right--yippee!

Chocolate and Peanut Butter Heart Cookies

Ingredients:
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened
3/4 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 squares of semi-sweet baking chocolate

Beat together the butter, peanut butter, and both sugars until creamy. Add the egg and vanilla and beat again.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Add the flour mixture to the peanut butter mixture one cup at a time and beat again. The dough should be pretty thick.

(I put the dough in the refrigerator for an hour before rolling it out, but I don't know if that was really necessary.)

Roll out half the dough at a time. If it crumbles, you may need to kneed it in your hand for thirty seconds first. When the dough is rolled out to 1/8 inch, use heart-shaped cookie cutters to cut them out. Place on cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake at 375 for 9 minutes. Remove immediately to cooling racks.

When cookies have cooled completely, melt three of the chocolate squares in the microwave. (Follow package directions) Dip half the cookie into the melted chocolate and let dry on waxed paper. When you've run out of chocolate, melt the three remaining squares and continue dipping the cookies.

My cookie cutter set came with four different sizes. I used the smallest two and ended up with about 40 cookies.