Valentine Hearts

Wotchers!

If you fancy making a romantic effort for your nearest and dearest, you could spoil them with a fancy-schmancy, gourmet meal, and spend the next three days shopping/chopping/baking/caking/slaving.

Or you could buy a roll of puff pastry and check out some other Valentines Breakfast or dessert ideas from a few years ago.

Or you could make these pastry hearts, using a recipe you already know and love, and a filling you know s/he loves. They are neither complicated nor elaborate, but last time I checked, stress in the kitchen was not an aphrodisiac.

The pastry is a regular sweet shortcrust, with a little food colouring added to the iced water used to mix it together – a shade a little lighter than red wine in the water makes for this lovely pastel pink once mixed. If inclined, you could even make 2 or 3 batches, each of a different shade of red/pink for an eye-catching jumble of hearts.

I chose a filling of vanilla pastry cream, made with real vanilla bean and firmed up with a little gelatin for ease of piping. If your loved one has a favourite sandwich filling then go with that – Nutella, peanut butter, banana, Banoffi-pie caramel, slices of apple, all of the above….

Don’t limit it to sweet flavours. If your Valentine has a savoury tooth,  fill his/her hearts with sausage, cheese, omelette, bacon, all of the above…

Pastry Hearts

1 x batch of shortcrust pastry, sweet or savoury, mixed with red-coloured water, chilled for 1 hour – here, or for unsweetened here or for savoury, here
suitable fillings, sweet or savoury

• Divide the chilled pastry in half. Roll out each half thinly (2-3mm) and cut into twice as many squares as you require of around 10cm in size.
• Turn half of the squares so that one corner is pointing toward you and pipe/arrange your filling in heart shapes onto the pastry. Be sure to pile up the filling quite well, in order to give substance to your ‘hearts’.
• Using a pastry brush and water, dampen the edges of the pastry around the filling.
• Lay a second piece of pastry over the top and smooth it down and around your filling, making sure its fully enclosed. Try to make sure there’s no air trapped inside, as this may cause your pastry to burst during cooking.
• Using a sharp knife, trim the excess pastry, leaving a border of 1cm around each heart.
• Transfer the pastry hearts to a baking sheet lined with parchment. I didn’t poke holes in the pastry, but I did get a bit of the filling oozing out on one or two. To avoid this, you could poke some vent holes in the tops in a decorative pattern.
• Chill in the fridge while the oven heats up.
• Heat the oven to 200°C, 180°C Fan.
• Add a glaze if liked – milk and caster sugar for sweet, egg-white for savoury. I did experiment with both of these, but decided the unglazed puffs were more visually striking.
• Bake for 11-12 minutes, turning the baking sheet around half-way through.
• Cool on a wire rack.
• If sweet, dust lightly with icing sugar to serve.