With Valentine’s Day approaching and me away for over a week with work, having a few recipes made for the big day was quite helpful. I made these pink heart biscuits and we loved them so much I wanted to make another batch before leaving. In the end, I made a couple of sweet loafs, filled with chocolate. It would have been too much to make biscuits too.

For them I used red food colouring, a vegetarian option. If you don’t want to use any food colouring, you can make them white and sprinkle beetroot powder on them. The beetroot powder is pink, very cute and healthy at the same time. It’s something I will try next time I’m baking biscuits. The recipe is enough for 36 – 40 shaped as heart biscuits, the cookie cutter I’ve used is a regular size, not small and not big either.
To flavour the biscuits, I used strawberry flavour and strawberry syrup. It’s the kind of syrup you can dissolve in water to make juice, it’s made out of strawberries and sugar. I got that from a Polish shop. If you don’t have any or decide to use a different type of flavour, change the 5-6 tsp of syrup with 4 of golden syrup or honey.

Ingredients for around 40 heart biscuits:

– 200g plain white flour
– 150g wholemeal flour
– 175g demerara sugar
– 1 free-range egg
– 125g butter, soften, at room temperature
– 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
– 1.5 tsp vanilla
– a few drops of strawberry flavour
– 5-6 tsp of strawberry syrup
– red food colouring

Mix the two types of flour with the bicarbonate of soda and the sugar. Add the butter cut in cubes. Mix with the stand mixer until the flour looks like breadcrumbs. Beat the egg lightly with the strawberry syrup, add the red food colouring and the flavours and pour it into the bowl. Mix until the mixture clumps together. Tip the dough out and knead briefly until it’s smooth. Wrap in clingfim and leave in the fridge to chill for 10-15 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 180C or 160C fan. Line 3 big baking trays or 4 small ones with baking paper. Roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface. Using the heart cutter, cut out the cookies. Remove the excess dough and transfer the biscuits on the baking tray. Be gentle so the biscuits keep their shape. Add a little more flour on the worktop if they are sticking to the worktop. With smaller cookie cutters is easier.

Bake the biscuits for 12-15 minutes. If you want the biscuits to be firm, leave them for the whole 15 minutes. If you want them softer, you can take them out of the oven even after 10-11 minutes. Leave them in the tray for 5 minutes. Then move to a wire rack to finish cooling off.