Love Heart Biscuits

Hi,

It's Valentine's Day. I hate Valentine's Day. This is not for any silly reasons like 'Ohh, it's a consumerist conspiracy'. It's because I'm single. So I am taking my petty revenge by posting this recipe too late for you to make these biscuits for your lover. Sucks to be you. You'll have lost the recipe by next year.

You will need:

For the biscuits:
100g ground almonds
200g plain flour
good pinch of salt
80g icing sugar plus extra to dust
125g unsalted butter, chilled and diced
3 egg yolks
2 heart-shaped cookie cutters, one smaller than the other

For the filling:
200g raspberries or blackberries
2 tsp cornflour

3 tbsp caster sugar

1. Put the almonds, flour and salt in a blender and pulse to combine. Add the icing sugar and pulse until mixed in.

  2. Add the butter and process to coarse crumbs.

2. Beat the egg yolks in and stir until mixture forms a dough. Roll the dough into a ball and wrap it in clingfilm, then chill in the fridge for at least 15 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 180C.

3. Roll out the dough to the thickness of a pound coin and stamp out as many hearts with the larger cutter as possible. Then cut out the centre of half the hearts with the smaller cutter, and knead all the trimmings together and roll out again. Continue until all the dough is gone, but be aware that the more you work the dough the crumblier and harder to work with it will become. Bake the biscuits for 12 minutes until barely coloured and transfer them to a rack to cool for 10 minutes.

4. To make the filling, put the berries, conflour and caster sugar in a saucepan and heat whilst stirring until the berries soften and the juices run. Bring to the boil and simmer for 2 minutes, still stirring, until thickened. Pour into a bowl and leave to cool. If you have used blackberries you may want to force the filling mixture through a sieve to produce a smooth mixture.
5. Spread the hearts without the cut-out with the jam filling, then top each with a cut-out shape. Dust with icing sugar and serve.

The biscuits will keep for 4 days before being filled, but after you have filled them you should eat them that day.

Enjoy

xxx