Tag Archives: easter biscuits

A host of Valentine’s treats! Dairy-free shortbread biccies with natural pink raspberry icing

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I got a little over-excited in the biscuit-cutter section of the cake shop and end up with a loast of new valentine’s cutters! So here, for you, is a feast of valentine’s biccies for the one you love (in my case, that’s me! ha ha!) 🙂

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All the biscuits are based on the same biscuit recipe which I’ve posted before – here but here it is again for ease. This makes LOADS of biscuits so you may want to halve the amount to start with.

4 cups Spelt flour or gluten-free flour mix

2 cups Unrefined Icing sugar

12 oz Dairy-free margarine (get the best quality you can)

Pre-heat the oven to 180 C. Put the margarine in a large mixing bowl, sieve the flour and icing sugar in and cream it together. Try not to over mix but make sure the margarine is properly mixed with the dry ingredients. Once it’s formed a dough wrap in cling film and chill for 30 mins. If you find the dough is too sticky then add some more flour.  Once chilled, roll out and use a biscuit cutter to cut whatever shape you have. Sprinkle with a little raw sugar if you like and place on a greased baking tray and bake for 8 – 10 mins, or until golden. Remove from the oven and allow to cool on the tray.

Cutting and Decorating!

You can use any cutters you like but I had the pleasure of trying out all my new valentine’s ones! It was such fun! For most of the biccies I just sprinkled with raw sugar. I had a wonderful set of hearts that decrease in size so I had a lot of fun with those.

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Then I also had some with lovely little messages stamped in them.

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Those were all plain, but for other’s however I made some pink icing using raw icing sugar and raspberries. Simply pop a handful of raspberries into a fine mesh sieve and using the back of a spoon crush them through the sieve. You will end up with a lovely raspberry puree. Don’t throw away the seeds and pulp left in the sieve, you can whack this in to your next smoothie! 🙂 Use this, instead of water, to make your icing. I simply used raw icing sugar (you can use normal icing sugar if you prefer) and the raspberry puree. I added a little at a time until I had the consistency I wanted. If you want it runnier, add a little water, if you want it less pink then add more icing sugar and water down the puree a little and just experiment!

For these adorable ‘his and hers’ jigsaw hearts I used a piping bag to pipe a thin line of slightly darker icing around the edges and then filled the middle! You could use white icing to pipe names on each half. Allow to set and then share with the one you love 🙂

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I then had a go at just smothering the little hearts in icing – yum!

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And finally (for the icing fun) I had a go at filling in the messages on the shortbreads. This was super fiddly but I think it looks fab! I used a cake skewer dipped in the icing to fill the letters!

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Valentine’s day wouldn’t be valentine’s day without a bit of chocolate! So I had a go with that too! I just melted some high quality, dairy free chocolate and filled the letters with it in the same way as the icing. This was messy and didn’t work out quite so well but I think with a bit of practice it will! 🙂

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Finally I made some little double hearts. Once again I piped an icing border around them and then I filled the centre with chocolate.

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Nothing says homemade like…. homemade dairy free shortbread hearts!

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Home is where the heart is and it’s certainly where these little hearts are going to stay!

A very dear and thoughtful friend gave me some lovely biscuit cutters for christmas and I’ve been dying to try them out so I thought I’d have a go at a shortbread-type of biccie. My dairy free, spelt shortbread won’t work for this as it’s not “rollable” so I’ve had to come up with something else. I usually try to avoid dairy-free margarine but in this case I’ve compromised and used it… just this once! 🙂 These are not too sweet so if you have a very sweet tooth then you may want to add a bit more sugar, but I like them just as they are 🙂

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This makes LOADS so you may want to halve the recipe!

4 cups Spelt flour or gluten-free flour mix

2 cups Unrefined Icing sugar

12 oz Dairy-free Margarine (get the best quality you can)

Pre-heat the oven to 180 C. Put the margarine in a large mixing bowl, sieve the flour and icing sugar in and cream it together. Try not to over mix but make sure the margarine is properly mixed with the dry ingredients. Once it’s formed a dough wrap in cling film and chill for 30 mins. If you find the dough is too sticky then add some more flour.  Once chilled, roll out and use a biscuit cutter to cut whatever shape you have. Place on a greased baking tray and bake for 8 – 10 mins, or until golden. Remove from the oven and allow to cool on the tray.  Enjoy!

Dairy-free, Spelt Shortbread

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I have some friends who love shortbread so I thought I’d try to make some dairy-free, “healthier” shortbread for them. I’ve stuck with spelt flour here as it’s easier to work with than the gluten free flours but I may have a play around with gluten free blends later 🙂 This recipe was a little too sweet for my primary taster so if you don’t like things too sweet reduce the sugar to 1/3 cup. If you like things sweet then up the sugar to 3/4 cup 🙂

wholewheat shortbread

For my first attempt I used white spelt flour and olive oil, for my second batch I lowered the sugar to 1/3 cup and used wholewheat spelt flour and a mix of almond and hazelnut oil. I think I prefer this version – it’s nuttier and the wholewheat gives it a real crunch. It would be better with only almond oil I think but I didn’t have enough! 🙂

1 1/2 cups and 1 tbsp Spelt flour
1/4 cup and 2 tbsp Rice flour Rice Flour
1/2 cup Raw unrefined sugar (golden cane sugar or coconut palm sugar)  (plus some to sprinkle on top)
1/8 tsp Himalayan rock salt
1/4 tsp Baking powder
2/3 cup Olive oil / Almond oil / Hazelnut oil/ Canola Oil  (Or butter 5 1/2 Oz)
2 tsp Vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 325 F. Line an 8″ sponge tin (or shortbread tin) with greaseproof paper. Put the sugar in a food processor and pulse until it’s more of a powder. Don’t worry too much if you can’t get it really powdery – just make sure it’s broken down a bit. Mix the flours, baking powder and salt together in a bowl and add the sugar. Make a well in the centre and pour in the oil and vanilla extract, then combine well using a metal spoon. Keep going until you have a smooth dough then transfer it to the pan and press it down firmly. Using a fork make holes in the top and with a knife score the shortbread lightly into 8 segments. Sprinkle the top with raw sugar if using.

Place in the oven for 40 – 45 mins. Remove and allow it to cool in the pan for 15 minutes then score it again. Take it out of the pan and break the wedges apart and leave to cool on a wire rack. Stored in an airtight container. It can also be wrapped in clingfilm and frozen at this stage – just make sure when you defrost it you defrost it on a wire rack, outside the container you froze it in.

These are perfect with a cup of coffee and also make a fab gift for Easter, Christmas or any time in fact! 🙂