Pretty two-tone heart and flower-shaped biscuits. Ready for afternoon tea!
I decided it was time I made some biscuits. I find them a lot more effort than cake, which is probably why I don’t make them as often!
I got the recipe from the one and only Mary Berry, here. Her recipe was more elaborate with three rings of colour… I decided to play safe and go for two 🙂
Ingredients (makes approx. 40 biscuits)
- 60 g / 2 oz plain chocolate (I’m sure you could use dark if that’s your preference)
- 325 g / 11 oz plain flour
- 175 g / 6 oz softened butter or margarine
- 1 tbsp milk
- 1.5 tsp baking powder
- 1 egg
- 150g / 5 oz caster sugar, plus some extra for sprinkling.
Method
I’ll describe the method assuming you’re only going to make heart-shaped biscuits. If you want to make more than one shape, just divide the dough up.
First of all, whatever shape you want your biscuits to be, you’ll need two cutters for each shape, one double the size of the other.
Melt the chocolate. You can either use the microwave (careful not to burn it) or put it in a bowl over a pan of hot water.
If you have a mixer, put the flour, sugar, butter, milk, baking powder and egg into the mixer bowl. Alternatively, if you’re using hand beaters or elbow grease, put the ingredients into a large bowl. Blend them together until you have a smooth dough. You might have to pause a couple of times to scrape the sides of the bowl with a spatula. Shape the dough into a ball using your hands and split in two. Wrap one of the balls of dough in clingfilm and put in the fridge for 2 hours.
Put the other half of the dough back in the mixer and add the melted chocolate. Blend until the chocolate is evenly distributed through the dough. Shape the dough into a ball, wrap in clingfilm and put in the fridge for 2 hours.
Grease and line two large baking sheets with greaseproof paper. I found there wasn’t enough space on two trays and had to use the two trays twice.
Roll out the plain dough on a floured surface to your desired thickness (I’d recommend 3 – 5 mm) and use the larger of your heart-shaped cutters to cut out your biscuits. Put them on the baking tray and back in the fridge to firm up again for about 20 minutes. Repeat this process with the chocolate flavoured dough.
Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees C / Gas Mark 4 / 355 degrees F.
Take your raw biscuit shapes out of the fridge and use the smaller heart-shaped cutter to cut small hearts out of the middle of the large hearts. Put the small hearts to one side. Put a small chocolate heart into the middle of each of the large plain hearts. Put a small plain heart into the middle of each of the large chocolate hearts.
Sprinkle the biscuits with caster sugar and bake for 10 minutes until the plain dough had gone slightly brown. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. Store in an airtight container.
Here are some of the flower biscuits and heart biscuits just out of the oven:
And one final picture, just before eating!
Looking for some other biscuit recipes? Try these!
Gingerbread ladies and teddies.
Claire Huston / Art and Soul
They look fab!
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Thank you! They weren’t too fiddly in the end 🙂
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Wow they look like a piece of art!! 🙂 Awesome.
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Thank you! I was really pleased with how they turned out 🙂
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Oh so pretty! I can completely imagine these being perfect for an afternoon tea occasion like you say x
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Thank you! They were more faff than making cake, but they do look good 🙂 x
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Very sweet. Remind us next Valentine’s day!
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Thank you! I made heart-shaped caramel chocolate brownies this year for Valentines day… so will need to think of something new for next year 🙂
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Those look delicious! How do you find these amazing recipes?
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Thank you! This time I knew I wanted to make two-colour biscuits and with the help of Google I found a recipe that was near-enough what I needed 🙂 That’s usually the way I go. I see what ingredients I have in the house to get a rough idea of what I want to make, and then I use Google to find a recipe. Or I look through all my baking recipe books (I’ve got quite a few!).
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Really pretty!
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Thank you! 🙂
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