Love Heart sweets were one of my favourite treats as a child. We used to swap them in the playground and used to feel very adult and grown-up, exchanging our secret messages. Some of the messages on the sweets, like ‘Gee Whizz’ and ‘Cutie Pie’ weren’t exactly part of our young Irish lexicon, so they felt all the more exotic to us. They also tasted yummy and fizzy and gave us that sugar high that we craved as kids. I ate a Love Heart sweet recently and couldn’t get over how sweet it was. I guess I’ve grown up, and my tastes have changed. Messages have changed too on the newer Love Heart sweets and you are more likely to see Text me and Email me instead of Gee Whizz. It’s funny to see how these old fashioned sweets are keeping up with the times.
As it’s coming up to Valentine’s Day, I decided to take the idea of the Love Heart sweet and ice the messages on biscuits instead of sweets. These dainty biscuits are the perfect way of sweetening up your loved one for Valentine’s Day. You could even personalise the biscuits by icing your partners name on them. The biscuits themselves are a cinch to make, but you will need a steady hand when it comes to the icing. As with everything, practice makes perfect, and you will be icing like a master after a few practice runs on a sheet of parchment paper.
This recipe makes 12-14 biscuits
Here’s how:
– 3oz plain flour
– 2oz of butter, chopped into cubes
– 1oz castor sugar
Icing
– 7oz of icing sugar
– 2-3 tablespoons of water
– 1-2 drops of pink food colouring (½ a drop of red will also work if you can’t get pink.)
– 1-2 drops of yellow food colouring
– 1 red icing pen
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
Begin by sifting the flour into a large bowl. Add the caster sugar and mix in with a spoon. Add the butter pieces to the sugar and flour mix. Rub the butter into the flour and sugar with your hands, until it resembles breadcrumbs. As soon as it looks like breadcrumbs, gather the mixture together. It should stick together to form a large ball of dough.
On a floured surface, roll the dough out to ¼ inch thickness with a rolling pin. Using a round biscuit cutter, cut out round biscuit shapes and place on the prepared baking sheet. Place in the pre-heated oven for 8-10 minutes until pale and golden. Once cooked, place on a wire tray and leave to cool and set.
To make the icing, sieve the icing sugar into a medium sized bowl. Add the water and stir it in until it forms a smooth paste. If the paste is too thick add a drop more water. Take half of the icing mixture out and place in a separate bowl. Next add the pink/red food colouring to one bowl of icing and the yellow to the other. I used the yellow really sparingly as the genuine love heart sweets are almost cream rather than yellow. Carefully spread the pink and yellow icing onto the biscuits using a knife. Set aside until the icing hardens.
Once the icing has fully set, you can now ice on the different messages. I used the icing pens which are available in most good supermarkets and kitchenware shops. I practiced writing the messages a few times on some parchment paper, just to get the hang of it and calm my jittery hands. After a while you get into a flow and will be ready to ice on your biscuits. Once you have iced the messages on the biscuits, leave to set and harden. These biscuits are quite sweet but are perfect with a cup of tea. As a Valentine’s Day gift you could place the biscuits in a small box with pink tissue paper, the perfect home-made gift.
