Valentine owls/harts

Time for Valentine day. Not that I would be a big fun of the circus going around it :), but I like to take the opportunity and celebrate just about everything. With cooking. Or baking. Not to mention that we were asked by the teacher to bring in decorated hart cookies, not less than 24. Huhhh... huuhhh.. I mean, I'm gonna make owls as well :D. Huhuuu!
I decided to use my Xmas vanilla crescent cookie recipe to make the Valentine harts (for the kiddos) and owls (for the teachers). I made slight modifications to the recipe to make the cookies a bit less soft, not because they are bad that way, but rather because I want them to be harder, not to brake right away in the kids' hands.
The shape idea came from the ArtCorps lessons where I saw some great owls recently, and accidentally I stumbled over a double-hart shaped cutter at Marshalls.. A while ago I saw a pic of an owl cookie somewhere, and just combined the three things together..
Tadaaaam.... and the friendship owls were born. And I'm dead tired 'cause it is over midnight and I just got the last tray out of the oven. Tomorrow still decorating the harts.. Ayayayyy...

Ingredients:
300 g pastry flour (you can use half whole grain as well)
200 g butter
80 g icing sugar (if you make the owl and don't use icing, you can add 100 gr sugar)
100 g almond flour (ground almond)
1 tsp vanilla aroma (optional)
1 egg

Decoration
colored icing, you can find how to make your own here

Mix the butter with sugar until creamy (and vanilla, if you add any), mix in the egg, add the almond and the normal flour, and work it well together in a soft dough. Place it in the fridge for about 30 min. The butter will harden again to make it easier to work with.
Roll it out thin, about 3-4 mm and cut it with your favorite cookie cutters.
Place them on trays covered with parchment paper. Bake them for 10-15 minutes at 175 C (350 F), depends how golden you want them.. My oven is not heating up very well, so I baked them for 17-18 min..

Prepare the icing in your favorite color, for Valentine white, pink and red are working just fine. Decorate the harts with dots, lines, etc.

For the owls, pinch the top of the hart a little, cut the bottom of the owl not to be so pointed (optional), cut \small circles (1 cm) of the though, place two of them on the upper part of the harts (for eyes) and place a mini chocolate chip in the middle of the circles.
If you make a round owl make small cuts on the bottom as feathers. Place an un-peeled almond for the beak.
Sprinkle them with the vanilla sugar while still hot.
Be careful, for the first half a minute/minute they are fragile, not so fragile though as the vanilla crescents.