These chocolate valentines are laced with bittersweet coffee, hot chiles, and cocooned with just enough sweetness to keep you coming back for more. A dark, sustaining romance.

If the chile powder is too scary, leave it out, but I really do encourage you choose a mild variety and be seduced by its warmth. The mini-valentine cards are tied on with ribbon, and they can be made with whatever scraps and bits you have lying about– I gravitated toward the slightly dark images used in lotería. You could also skip the valentine card altogether and package them up in a pretty DIY valentine’s box.

What You Need:

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/8 cup cocoa powder

1/8 cup instant coffee or instant espresso

1 1/2 teaspoons chile powder (use mild chiles, like California, New Mexico or ancho)

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

3 ounces Mexican drinking chocolate, like Abuelita’s (slightly more than 3/4 of a tablet)

2 sticks of room temperature butter

1 1/3 cups sugar

1 egg

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1 lb. dark chocolate

additional chile powder for dusting (or pico de gallo– chiles mixed with salt)

plastic wrap

parchment paper

wax paper

rolling pin

cookie sheets

heart-shaped cookie cutters

card making supplies: paper, glue stick, glitter glue, lace, ribbon, hole punches, decorative scissors, and lotería cards or downloaded valentine images

What To Do:

1. Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, coffee, chile powder, baking powder, salt and baking soda in a medium bowl.

2. Using a heat-proof bowl placed over a saucepan of boiling water, melt the Mexican drinking chocolate and keep over low heat so it stays melted.

3. Beat the butter with an electric mixer in a large bowl until it is fluffy. Add the sugar and beat again until fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla.

4. Alternate adding the chocolate and flour mixture to the butter mixture, stirring until combined.

5. Divide the dough in half, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least four hours or up to a day.

6. Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees. Roll out one half of the chilled dough to approximately 1/4″ thickness between sheets of wax paper with a rolling pin. Cut out heart shapes with cookie cutters.

7. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper and place the cookies about 1″ apart on the cookie sheets. Bake for 8-9 minutes. The cookies should still be slightly soft when baked or piercing a hole in them to thread on the valentine will shatter them. Cool the cookies thoroughly on wire racks.

8. Using a bamboo skewer or chopstick, pierce a hole in the center of each heart, about 3/4″ from the edge.

9. Using the same double-boiler technique used to melt the Mexican drinking chocolate, chop up the 1 lb. of dark chocolate and melt about 1/4 at a time in a heat-proof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Dip each cookie into the chocolate and lift with a fork to allow excess to drip back in the bowl. Cool on sheets of waxed paper.

10. When the chocolate is cool, but still sticky, sift a mixture of additional cocoa powder and either chile powder or pico de gallo (a mixture of chile powder with salt) through a wire mesh strainer onto each cookie. Spicy!

11. Use scraps of paper, ribbon and lotería cards if you’ve got them (or download images online) to create mini Valentines to tie onto each cookie.

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