Valentine’s Day can be fun whether you’re in a romantic relationship or not. It’s a great excuse to cook some loving indulgent food like these Valentine’s Day Chocolate Dipped Cookies. They make a great romantic gift, perfect to feed to work colleagues, or lovely to share with friends and family. They have a nice biscuit-like crunch to them, and the chocolate gives them a lovely creamy contrast.
The cookie recipe itself is very simple, and can easily be used for any occasion, they're great for birthday parties, or just because!. The heart-shaped cookie cutter is not essential - use any shape you’d like for either Valentine’s Day or any time of year. For a healthier option, use a brown unrefined sugar or coconut palm sugar, however, if you’re looking for the classic pale colour on the cookies, then caster sugar is best.
Sunflower oil works very well with this recipe as the fat, but you can use any kind of oil, or you can use vegan butter / margarine instead. To hold the mixture together, I’ve used 2 linseed eggs (1 linseed egg is 1 tablespoon of milled linseed mixed with 3 tablespoon of water). If you don’t have linseed, you can replace them with chia seeds. And of course feel free to add other flavourings in to the mix, like cinnamon, orange essence, almond essence…. What I love about basic recipes is that you can adapt them depending on what flavours you like best.
Decorating these is the fun part, and again, you can get creative and do it how your loved one likes best. I thought it was cute to dip half the cookie into some chocolate and sprinkle with freeze dried strawberries or raspberries. The red colour is obviously essential for Valentine’s Day! You could also sprinkle with some chopped pistachios which go deliciously with chocolate and strawberry flavours.
I think they look so cute using both white and dark chocolate, but depends on your creative style. For the healthier version use a dark chocolate with a high percentage of cocoa solids, but any dark vegan chocolate will work. If using white chocolate, you can find it in places like Sainsbury's who have a free from range with vegan white chocolate. There are so many places out there now doing vegan chocolate it is quite easy to come by. You could of course use plain or coloured icing instead of chocolate, especially if you are making these for children!
Get creative with the decorations and look forward to the smiles you’ll get from anyone you gift these to!
Valentine’s Day Chocolate Dipped Cookies
Ingredients
Cookies
- 250 g plain flour, plus extra for rolling cookies on
- ¼ teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 150 g coconut palm sugar / caster sugar (to give the cookies a whiter colour use caster sugar)
- 2 linseed eggs (2 tablespoon milled linseed and 6 tablespoon water)
- 80 ml sunflower oil
- 2 teaspoon vanilla essence
Decoration
- 100 g dark vegan chocolate
- 100 g white vegan chocolate (Sainsburys sells this in the Free From section)
- 50 g freeze dried strawberries or raspberries
- 50 g chopped nuts (optional, pistachios work very well)
Instructions
Cookies
- Pre heat oven to 180 C.
- Put the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt in a bowl. Mix.
- Mix linseed egg, oil and vanilla in a separate bowl. Then add to the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt. Mix well (you can also do this with your hands).
- Sprinkle some flour on your kitchen surface. Roll out the dough to about 3mm thick. Add extra flour if dough is still too wet.
- Cut the dough into heart shapes or shape of choice using a cookie cutter.
- Place the cut cookie dough on a baking tray with baking parchment. Cook for 10-12 minutes. They are ready when they have just a very slight browning to them. Don’t worry if the cookies are still a little soft in the middle - they will harden out of the oven.
- Once cooked, put the cookies on a cooling rack. Once cool they can be decorated.
Decoration
- Place a glass bowl over simmering water, and put chopped white or dark chocolate in the bowl to melt.
- Once melted, dip halve a cookie into the chocolate and immediately sprinkle with the dried fruit. You can also sprinkle with chopped pistachios if desired.
- Repeat process with the other colour chocolate on the rest of the cookies. Or you can use both colour chocolates on one cookie and make patterns using a toothpick.
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