Line two baking sheet trays with parchment paper.
Cream butter, sugar, and vanilla extract until light and fluffy.
Sift in half of the flour, cornflour and salt. Mix until well combined.
Once combined sift in the remaining flour and cornflour. Add the cherries then mix until it becomes a biscuit dough.
Dust cornflour on a work surface and combine the dough using your hands.
Roll out the dough to 0.5cm thick, then using an 8cm heart shape cutter, create as many heart shape cutouts as possible.
Reuse the dough by rolling out and cutting out more heart shapes.
Place the shortbread hearts on the baking sheet trays and refrigerate for 1 hour.
Pre-heat oven to 160ᵒC.
Bake the shortbread for 20 minutes. Halfway through baking rotate the baking sheet trays and swap oven shelves. This will evenly bake the shortbreads.
Baked shortbread hearts will be pale gold in color, sprinkle with caster sugar on top and allow to cool for 5 minutes on the baking sheet trays.
Transfer to a wire rack to cool and decorate using the sugar and sprinkles.
