Chocolate-dipped Shortbread Hearts

In collaboration with C'est moi le chef, here's a recipe from Roland del Monte, Meilleur Ouvrier de France and head pastry chef at the Renoir, Sofitel Montréal. Simple shortbread biscuits that you can transform in 1001 ways: just vary the cookie cutters and the chocolate decorations!
Ingredients
cookies
- 1 cup (220 g) unsalted butter at room temperature
- 9 tbsp. (140 g) icing sugar
- 4 tbsp. ground almonds
- 2 eggs
- 2 cups (370 g) flour
chocolate icing
- A few pieces of your favourite dark or milk chocolate, chocolate ball...
Preparation
cookie batter
- Pre-heat the oven to 350° F (180°C).
- Put the butter (cut into pieces) and icing sugar in a food processer. Mix well. Add the eggs and mix again. Add the ground almonds and mix. Add the flour and mix until the batter starts forming into a ball.
- Place the ball of batter into a bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Set aside in a cool place for about 30 minutes.
- Roll out the batter with the pastry roller until it is about 3 mm thick.
- Use a heart-shaped cookie cutter to cut out the cookies.
- Bake the cookies for 8 to 10 minutes until slightly browned.
- Let them cool before icing them.
chocolate icing
- Place the chocolate in a bowl and gently melt it in a microwave oven. If you don’t have a microwave, you can prepare a double boiler by heating water in a pot, then place a bowl containing the chocolate in the pot of water. Careful! The bowl will get hot!
- Let the melted chocolate temper (cool down) before using it to ice the cookies.
to ice the cookies, you have several options
- Dip the cookies in the melted chocolate.
- Dip a fork into the melted chocolate and drip it onto the cookies.
- Use a piping bag.