Little Hearts of Love for 2022, Nutella and Lemon

Nutella Frosted Shortbread Heart

For years now I've been participating in the Good Cookie Food Blogger charity posts. At first these were Christmas themed but for the past five years, they've been focused on Valentine's Day. I hope all of you reading this post can donate to this cause which helps fight children's cancer. I was inspired to make these cookies by two cookbooks I was sent to review: Sweet Talk Cookies: Creative Designs for Birthdays, Holidays, and Everyday by Hayley Callaway and Nutella: 60 Classic Recipes: From simple, family treats to delicious cakes & desserts: Official Cookbook by Grégory Cohen. I wanted to make a shortbread cookie because I haven't made those for The Chocolate Cult yet, but since I'd be using butter, I wanted to not need to use egg yolks. I'm trying to protect my family's health so twice as much cholesterol as normal seems foolish. Plus I was taught that if you add eggs, it isn't really shortbread. After considering all of the recipes out there, I went with the "My Mom's" version of Simple Shortbread Cookies from An Italian in My Kitchen blog. I had all of the ingredients and it had been rated well by over 200 readers.

Since you can check out the two recipes yourself, and I only changed one ingredient -- all purpose to gluten free better batter flour that I had on hand -- I won't bore you with the recipe. This is what some of the baked cookies looked like. Each member of my family, all three of us, try one plain cookie and loved it. It melted in our mouths.

Baked Shortbread Hearts

Then I melted some Nutella and some lemon frosting and poured a bit on the cookies. One flavor only per cookie, separating them by flavor so that different members of my family can have what they like. There was a total of 45 cookies, we taste tested three of them, leaving 42 to be frosted. There were 14 cookies per person in my three-person family. Check out the lemon frosted ones below. The Nutella ones, which were at the top of this post, are for me, of course!

Lemon Frosted Shortbread Heart

I’m so excited to participate in this Valentine’s event (again). This is the sixth year for our event and we want to continue to make a difference in the fight against pediatric cancer.

Cancer is the #1 cause of death of children by disease in the U.S. There are 40,000 U.S. children actively battling cancer right now. The National Cancer Institute’s budget for childhood cancer is less than 4%. It’s such a small number and that’s why I got involved.

And with the ongoing pandemic, children are still being diagnosed with cancer. It’s imperative that we raise awareness and continue to raise funds to fund the ongoing pediatric cancer research!

Help us make a difference by donating to Cookies for Kids' Cancer!

Our goal is to raise at least $3000. Because these three companies: OXO,  Mediavine, and amd Dixie Crystals, have each pledged to match our donations raised through this campaign up to $3000! That means when we raise $1, it turns into $4!

Thank you to so many of you who have already donated, please help us reach our goal so we can get the full matching donations and help us make an even huge difference!

We have until March 15th to raise $3000! So please donate today!