Rose and raspberry Valentine biscuits

The art of food styling

Food styling is an art. It requires no less skill than fashion designing or interior decorating. You need to be able to visualise what you want to achieve, understand the harmonies and contrasts of colours, textures and shapes and know how to put the elements together.

You need to understand light and shade, depth and focus, plus you have to be a heck of a good photographer.

All those features are ones I do not possess.

I usually set enthusiastically about displaying my food, except when it’s hot and ought to remain so for subsequent consumption. In which case it’s mad rush and I snap whichever way I can.

Dishes that don’t mind waiting would appear to be easy, but not for me. The longer I faff about juggling plates, napkins and worktops, the worse the result. A bunch of flowers – no, all wrong colours. A pretty vase in the background – except the shot is overhead.

Very occasionally I get something right; the light is particularly lenient or the food is just pleasing on the eye. But more often than not it’s toil and trouble. The same green dish on the same wooden table.

In fact my accidental styling usually turns out better than my planning and visualisations. I would throw in the towel probably long ago if it wasn’t for one thing.

My food may not look so special but it tastes bloody good.

Pretty Valentine biscuits

So if you think these are pretty and the pictures look nice, I'm humbly grateful. But my rose and raspberry hearts are first and foremost delicious.

The dough is pâte sablée, French rich shortcrust pastry. If you have a food processor, it takes only a few whizzes to create a ball of dough out of flour, butter, sugar and an egg.

If not, you can do it all by hand because pâte sablée does not require any of the ice-cold butter nonsense: it's very accommodating. You can also roll it out and cut the biscuits straight away, without chilling the pastry.

In this instance it is flavoured and pinkified with freeze-dried rasperries. Valentine's Day falls in the 'don't even dare buy flown-in, fake berries' season, and anyway they are not fit for the purpose. Freeze-dried ones on the other hand are a wondrous ingredient in baking as they will both flavour and colour the dough, the buttercream, the icing - and your hearts...

Freeze-dried raspberries can be easily crushed with a rolling pin throuigh a parchment or plastic into coarse crumbs. Make sure to save some to rub into sugar, to sprinkle onto glazed biscuits, with or instead of rose petals.

Stiff buttercream for sandwich biscuits

The biscuits need to be filled with buttercream and sandwiched together - this is no time for lonely hearts. The buttercream should also be sturdy and not easily spoiled: the biscuits want to be on display, not hidden away in the fridge.

This recipe has the best and the easiest stiff buttercream formula and your filling will last a good few days even outside the fridge.

Its base is clarified butter or beurre noisette mixed with icing sugar and flavourings: vanilla and rose water. It turns into fluffy frosting after only a few minutes of beating with electric mixer. It thickens fast once you stop beating so make a batch and use it in your biscuits promptly.

Both the buttercream and the pastry will benefit hugely if instead of table salt, you can get hold of fleur de sel - the nicest, most delicate form of sodium chloride collected from dried seawater.

Fancy Valentine trimmings

Pair up your hearts - and the biscuits too. You can spoon the buttercream in dollops onto the biscuits, then kiss two together. If you fancy, pipe the buttercream but work fast before it thickens and sets.

And then the glaze and trimmings. Oh, we know, it's a pink and heart-shaped day. Hence the crushed raspberries and rose petals are raining on the finished cookies, brushed with simple icing glaze.

And a tray of these biscuits will surely be better received and enjoyed than a boring Valentine card.

More biscuits recipes

Cornmeal shortbread with lemon flavour, meltingly tender and gluten free. Cut your favourite cookie shapes, bake till barely coloured and dip in your tea for a classic dunking experience!

Mixed flavoured meringue kisses, mini meringues with lemon, raspberry, chocolate and pistachio flavour. The quickest meringue recipe, with burnt sugar.

Chocolate sable biscuits with raw cocoa nibs and sea salt flakes. Meltingly tender biscuits with wonderfully crunchy cocoa nibs – these are grown-up chocolate chip cookies.

More Valentine desserts

Mini pavlovas, homemade meringue nests with whipped cream and fruit toppings: passion fruit, pomegranate and raspberry. Simple and gorgeous, individual meringues are easier to bake than a big pavlova.

King Oscar II cake is also known as Swedish almond tart. It's an almond macaron style cake filled with almond buttercream, easy to make and absolutely delightful.

Pink guava cake with pink buttercream frosting, made from concentrated guava juice. It looks like a six years old girl’s dream. It tastes like heaven.