I believe enjoying food is about balance and sometimes maintaining balance is actually about enjoying a nice cup of tea and a biscuit. I made these shortbread hearts yesterday when I just fancied something baked at home. Including chilling time these took about an hour and half to make; not bad for a Tuesday night.

If you really are trying to maintain a healthy balance with food (which is actually my most stable way of keeping weight off) just bear in mind that these keep in a tin for several days. So really, you can enjoy a little treat every now and again.

As I have mentioned in a previous post the basic recipe for shortbread is 3 parts flour to 2 parts butter to 1 part sugar. In this case though the chocolate makes this recipe a bit drier so I added a little extra milk and butter to the mix.

To make a batch of this shortbread you will need:

300g plain flour

220g butter, softened

100g caster sugar

1 tablespoon milk

150g milk chocolate, broken into chunks (I do this by smashing the chocolate against my kitchen worktop, then whacking it into shards with a rolling pin)

Put the flour, butter and sugar into a mixing bowl. Rub this together with your hands. When the mixture starts to come together add the chocolate chunks and finally the milk to bind the dough together. Wrap the dough in cling film and chill for at least an hour.

Preheat the oven to 180°C and line 2 baking trays. Roll the dough out on a floured surface to about 1cm thick. Cut out your biscuit shapes. I used my heart cutter and D asked if this was a Valentine’s themed post – I suppose it could be a nice recipe for then. Place these on a baking tray. Bring together the dough that didn’t get cut out and roll out the  dough for more biscuits.

Bake the biscuits for about 10 minutes until golden. They will firm up as they cool.

These biscuits have proved very popular. I suggest you whip up a batch and then put your feet up to really enjoy them.