Valentine’s Shortbread Cookies

In a large bowl, beat sugar and butter until smooth. You can do this with an electric mixer to save your arms if you want!

Sieve around 3/4 of the flour into the mixture and combine. Then take the mixture and place on a cold surface and lightly knead, incorporating the rest of your flour as you do.

Place the dough between 2 sheets of baking paper, to stop it sticking to your surface or rolling pin. Gently roll out until it is approximately 1/2 inch thick.

Using your cookie cutter or your knife, cut mixture into heart shapes and place on a baking tray covered with baking paper. You will likely need to re-roll your dough a couple of times to make all of your heart shapes, so try to do this touching the dough as little as possible, to prevent it from getting warm and greasy.

Once all of the heart cookies have been placed on the baking try, place in the fridge for 1 hour. This will stiffen the dough up nicely before they go into the oven. At this point, preheat oven to 325ºF (170ºC).

Remove cookies from the fridge and place into the oven. Cook for 15–20 minutes. Then will depend on the size of your cookies, but they should be removed from the edges of the cookies have browned slightly.

Place the shortbread cookies on a cooling rack to cool completely before decorating.

To decorate, sieve the icing sugar into a bowl and add a little cold water at a time, until the icing is a thick liquid consistency. Split the icing into 2 bowls and place a couple of drops of red food colouring into one of the bowls. Stir to turn the mixture pink.

Using a mixture of the 2 icing colours and melted white chocolate, decorate the cookies however you like. Leave to set in the fridge for 20 minutes.