After almost 35 years of marriage, what passes as a romantic gesture changes with the progression of time. Many years ago, his expression of love was was a gorgeous bouquet of tulips, since he learned that I hate roses. Mine was bringing him coffee in bed. These days we convey our affection a bit differently. I surprise him with a “morning, noon and night” pill tray, and he arranges to have the divots I have made in our new wood floors fixed, all with a smile on his face. (I dropped my marble and my wooden photography backdrops a few too many times.)

Valentines Day is not a big celebration in our house, but I can’t pass up an opportunity to bake something photographic and pink! These citrus and brown butter shortbread cookies are from Mindy Segal’s book, “Cookie Love.” I decided to sandwich these cookies with some strawberry jam and make them fancy with a pink top.

Start by browning some butter in a pot on the stove. Whe your kitchen begins to smell like heaven (or toasted nuts), it’s time to pull the butter off the stove and chill it. The dough uses lots of citrus zest. I incorporated lemon, lime and orange.

I decided to make round and square sandwich cookies with a heart cutout on the top cookie.

For decorating the cookies, I decided to do two versions. The first was to make pink powdered sugar to sift over the top cookie. I bought freeze dried strawberries and using my spice grinder, I ground them up in with some icing sugar. Most health food stores carry freeze dried fruits. They are also a fantastic way to naturally flavour and colour buttercream.

The second variation is to make a glaze. Grind up the freeze dried strawberries with powder sugar and mix in some citrus juice. I used a combo of lemon, lime and orange, since I had already zested them for the dough. It makes a lip puckering glaze that is perfect with the sweet cookies.

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With a big glass of milk, these cookies are the perfect way to express your love!