Linzer Hearts which turned into Shortbread Cookies

I have travelled so much since New Year's week I have done very little weekend baking, and when I have been in town to do it I have done my fallback scones.  This year for Valentine's Day I made my husband his favorite carrot cake and I will be posting that recipe later, I'm sure.

Chocolate Hazelnut Linzer Hearts from smittenkitchen.com

This weekend is my first normal weekend in a long time and I made two different baked goods.  This first recipe I'm sharing is actually a leftover from last year's Valentine's Day Project.  (Really, I wouldn't lie to you, I promise!)  Last year I made a double recipe of Deb Perelman's Chocolate Hazelnut Linzer Hearts because I thought I needed them for a couple of different events.  The unused dough was wrapped tight and put in the freezer for a couple of days later.  I never ended up having to use it and it got (ahem) lost.  

Why didn't I take a picture of the pretty cookies?
These were the corner pieces that weren't cut even.

After the sort of recent holidays I was doing a major re-organization of my downstairs freezer and found it.  Hmmm.  Was the dough still tasty?  How many cookies could I make with it?  Well, yesterday I defrosted the dough and cut off a tiny piece and "baked" it on tin foil in my toaster oven.  (Go ahead, call me crazy.)  It was still delicious!  Okay, we were off to the races but what to do with this dough.  Deb's original recipe made 50 sandwiched cookies but this was just a portion of a recipe.  Also, I remember that when I tried to make the  last year I didn't have cookie cutters of the right size to be able to make the heart shape windows for the tops.  Having been frozen for a year, this dough was a little less flexible that I wanted to be able to roll it thin enough for sandwich style so instead, I rolled it out to 1/4" thickness and used my zig zag pastry cutter to make cookies that were 2" by 1.5" and then before separating them onto the cookie sheet I pierced them three times each with a fork.  These lovely Hazelnut Linzer Cookies were about to be reborn as Hazelnut Shortbread!

They are delicious, although a little sweeter than I would expect from shortbread.  Having served them to a fairly large crowd today I can tell you they were popular!  I'll be adding these to my list of regular cookie offerings.