Raspberry Shortbread Hearts & Raspberry Cream Cheese Marshmallow Dip

posted on February 8, 2012 by Brenda

I really wasn’t kidding when I said a couple weeks ago how insanely good that fresh raspberry buttercream is. My mind keeps wandering back to it, dreaming about other goodies that could benefit from that real raspberry yum.

And this is what has evolved so far. Raspberry Shortbread Hearts & Raspberry Cream Cheese Marshmallow Dip. Whew! That’s a mouthful of a title, I know. But it is what it is.

Shortbread is not something I usually bake myself, but I always enjoy it when it’s set before me. And my brother-in-law’s chocolate chip shortbread cookies were my sweet tooth’s salvation when we went to visit family in Egypt last year. So I decided to get more acquainted with shortbread!

The pretty colored dough was extremely easy to work with, soft and supple, almost like Playdough. Tessa had so much fun helping me cut out the hearts, that I gave her the last bit of dough to just play with. Over and over, she rolled it out, pressed in her cookie cutters, and proudly showed me each new heart.

The cookies are softly raspberry scented and flavored. And when the dip is introduced, there’s suddenly alot more flavor and alot more fun! Pretty little berry hued hearts to dip into a mixture of cream cheese and marshmallow cream. Do you remember that famous fruit dip from years ago? It’s the reason I ate so much fruit from those trays at every family gathering when I was a kid. Seriously yummy. So here it is again, this time with some raspberry mixed in. Together, these little shortbread hearts and dip make a perfectly fun and delicious Valentine’s Day treat.

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Raspberry Shortbread Hearts & Raspberry Cream Cheese Marshmallow Dip

Yield: about 50 small shortbread hearts and 2 cups of dip

Ingredients

    for the shortbread hearts:
  • 12 oz. raspberries, fresh or frozen
  • 3/4 c. unsalted butter, softened
  • 1/4 c. sugar
  • pinch of salt
  • 2 c. all-purpose flour
  • course sugar for sprinkling on cookies
    • for the raspberry cream cheese marshmallow dip:
  • 12 oz. raspberries, fresh or frozen
  • 8 oz. cream cheese, at room temperature
  • 7 oz. marshmallow cream

Preparation

for the raspberry shortbread hearts:

Cook the raspberries in a medium saucepan over medium heat, stirring frequently until the raspberries are broken down into a sauce. Lay a double layer of cheese cloth inside a fine mesh strainer and pour the raspberry sauce through it to remove the seeds. To get as much juice extracted as possible, I gather up the ends of the cheese cloth and then press on the gathered sauce with a wooden spoon. This will help to squeeze out the maximum amount of juice. Pour the raspberry juice back into the pot. Discard the cheese cloth with seeds. Simmer the juice over medium low heat until it reduces to just a 1/4 cup. It will be a very rich red and concentrated sauce. Set aside to cool completely.

Heat oven to 350°.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat butter and sugar until the mixture is a bit fluffy. Add in the flour and mix until incorporated. Add the cooled 1/4 cup of raspberry sauce and mix until dough is evenly colored.

Dust rolling pin lightly with flour, and roll dough 1/4" thick on a lightly floured surface. Using a heart-shaped cookie cutter (mine measured 2'' wide by 1-1/2'' tall), cut heart shapes out of the dough. Try to place your cuts as close together as possible so you won't need to re-roll your dough as much. Place heart cookies 1/2'' apart on ungreased cookie sheet (they don't spread much at all when baking). I used a non-stick baking mat on the cookie sheet and it worked great. Sprinkle with course sugar to your liking. The cookies overall are not very sweet, so I sprinkle them fairly generously. Bake 13 to 15 minutes, or until set and edges start to brown very slightly. Adjust baking time for cookies of different thickness and/or cookie cutter size. Remove to rack to cool.

for the raspberry cream cheese marshmallow dip:

Repeat the very same process of reducing the raspberries as you did for the shortbread hearts. You want to end up with the same 1/4 cup of reduced raspberry sauce in the end, completely cooled. Blend cream cheese and marshmallow cream with a hand mixer until fully combined. Add the 1/4 cup of raspberry sauce and mix until the dip is evenly colored. Chill until ready to eat. Serve dip with raspberry shortbread hearts for dipping. Fresh fruit also works great for this dip.

Source

Shortbread heavily adapted from Betty Crocker's 40th Anniversary Edition Cookbook's Scotch Shortbread recipe. Fresh raspberry sauce adapted from this Fresh Raspberry Buttercream, originally from Making Life Delicious.

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posted in Berries, Cookies, Desserts & Sweets, Fruits, Holiday, Marshmallow, Valentine's Day
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