Children LOVE making biscuits and Valentine's Day is the perfect time to get them baking and decorating.

All you need is:
A heart-shaped cookie cutter
150g of butter
75g of caster sugar
225g of plain flour
half a teaspoon of vanilla extract
plus some icing sugar and pink or red food colouring for decoration.

Preheat the oven to 170°C / 375F or Gas mark 5.

Cut the butter into small squares then add the sugar and flour and rub all the ingredients together until you have a dough-like consistency. (Here you can add grated chocolate, a small bar of it in place of the vanilla essence.)

Shape the dough into a ball, wrap it in cling film and chill it in the fridge for 10 minutes. While you're waiting grease your baking sheet or prepare a clean surface with lots of flour for cutting out your cookies.

Next simply roll the dough out on a floured surface until it's about half a centimetre thick. Using your heart-shaped cookie cutter cut out your biscuits and lay them on a lined or lightly greased baking sheet. Bake in the oven for about 15-20 minutes until the biscuits turn a light golden colour. Leave them to cool on a wire rack.

When the biscuits are completely cool mix together some icing sugar, pink or red food colouring and a little warm water and let your little people go to town, drizzling icing on top and decorating the iced biscuits with sweets, sprinkles or silver balls.


With older children you could try some Valentine messages on individual biscuits or use silver balls to write the names of the ones you love on the icing.

There's a whole lot of loving in these.