Ingredients

1¼ cups (2½ sticks) unsalted butter, slightly softened

6 egg yolks

1½ cups confectioner’s sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 lemon, juiced

For Filling

Bon Maman Strawberry Preserve

Additional confectioner’s sugar for dusting (vanilla bean optional)

Directions

Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.

Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats and set them aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter and egg yolks at medium speed until well blended. Add the confectioner’s sugar and continue to beat until the mixture turns much lighter in color.

Stir the baking powder into the flour, and then add flour to the batter. With the mixer on low speed, add the lemon juice. Continue to beat on low speed until well incorporated.

Remove the dough from the mixer and, with a sturdy spatula or flour-coated hands, fold the dough together. Form the dough into a ball, wrap with plastic, and refrigerate for one hour.

Remove the dough from the refrigerator, unwrap, and knead it on a well-floured surface. Once it’s workable, roll the dough out to ¼-inch thickness.

Using heart-shaped cookie cutters, cut out the cookie tops and bottoms with larger cutter. The smaller heart cutter will stamp out hearts for every other cookie. (For tiny heart cookies, keep the stamped-out inner hearts.)

Arrange all cookies on the prepared baking sheets and bake for 15 minutes or until they are creamy in color with just a tinge of golden edges.

Remove the cookies to a wire rack to cool, keeping cutout ones (the tops) face up and together, solid ones on their own.

On a separate sheet, dust cutout cookies, the tops, with confectioner’s sugar.

Spoon a teaspoon of preserves in the center of the “back” side of a solid cookie (the part that was against the cookie sheet), and top with a dusted cutout cookie to form a sandwich.

Tiny hearts need only a smidge of preserves to stick together, and then dust with confectioner’s sugar.

Cookies can be stored in an airtight container for up to three weeks.