Cookie recipes, baking tips and cookie decorating ideas

Roll out the Chocolate Butter Cookie dough as directed and cut into hearts with 2 1/2-inch heart-shaped cookie cutters. Bake and cool as directed.

On a clean work surface lightly dusted with confectioners' sugar, roll out the fondant to about 1/8-inch thickness. With the large (3-inch) cookie cutter, cut the fondant but do not remove the cutout heart from the work surface.

Using the regular heart-shaped cutter (the same one you used to cut the cookies), cut a heart inside the first one.

Then, use the smallest cookie cutter to cut a heart inside that.

Carefully remove the hearts from the work surface. Brush one side of the 2 1/2-inch heart with a little jam or lightly beaten pasteurized egg. Carefully place the heart, sticky side down, on one cookie and arrange it in place just inside the edges of the cookie to look like the cookie on the left in the photo. Set aside.

Brush the outside edges of another cookie with jam or pasteurized egg. Carefully press the 3-inch heart around the outside edge, trimming the bottom as necessary and pressing the edges to fit, as shown in the cookie on the right. Brush the back of the smallest heart with jam or egg and press onto the center of the cookie, as shown.

Repeat with as many of the cookies as you'd like to decorate. You'll need about 1 pound rolled fondant if you want to decorate them all.