Valentine's Love Bird Biscuits

Hi Everyone!

With Valentine's just around the corner, I decided to do some V-day baking and the result was these adorable Love Bird Biscuits. These biscuits can be decorated any way you like so I went with a simple white and pink polka dot design. The recipe for these biscuits is also quite a nice change from your standard plain biscuit

So let's get started...

You will need:

• 2tbsp honey
• 25g butter
• 50g light soft brown sugar
• 225g self raising flour
• 1tsp ground mixed spice
• 1tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 egg
• bird cutter
• 250g icing sugar
• 2-4 tbsp water
• pink food colouring
• black round sprinkles

1. Line your baking tray with parchment paper 

2. Melt the honey, butter and sugar together, you can do this in either the microwave or in a saucepan on the hob

3. Place the flour and spices into a separate bowl and lightly mix them

4. Mix in the egg and then add in the melted butter mixture

5. Mix the ingredients together until they form a soft dough, wrap in clingfilm and chill the dough in the fridge for about an hour to firm up

6. After an hour you can preheat your oven to 180°C and remove the dough from the fridge

7. Roll out the dough until it is quite thin, approx 5mm (If you don't roll the dough to be thin, the biscuits will rise quite a bit in the oven)

8. Take your cookie cutter and pop the biscuits onto the tray. Remember, if you want the birds to face each other and not all look the same way, either flip your cookie cutter or place some of the biscuits upside down on the tray

9. Bake the biscuits for about 10-12 minutes, when they're a pale golden colour

10. When the biscuits are out of the oven and have started cooling, it's time to decorate!

11. Mix your icing sugar with about 2 tablespoons of water, until you have quite a firm consistency

12. Take about three tablespoons of the firm icing, pop it into another bowl and mix with the pink food colouring. This will be used to outline the birds, which I found easier to start from the beak

13. With your left over icing add about a teaspoon of water at a time until you have a semi runny consistency. If you would like more details on the icing's consistency and the flooding technique, check out this blog post :)

14. Flood the biscuits with the white icing 

15. Take a cocktail stick, dip it into the pink icing and use it to add little pink dots to the birds' bodies

16. Add a single black sprinkle for the eye

And you're done!

I hope you enjoyed this Valentine's inspired post and thank you for reading!

See you next week :)