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1
In a large bowl, beat sugar and butter until smooth. You can do this with an electric mixer to save your arms if you want!
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2
Sieve around 3/4 of the flour into the mixture and combine. Then take the mixture and place on a cold surface and lightly knead, incorporating the rest of your flour as you do.
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3
Place the dough between 2 sheets of baking paper, to stop it sticking to your surface or rolling pin. Gently roll out until it is approximately 1/2 inch thick.
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4
Using your cookie cutter or your knife, cut mixture into heart shapes and place on a baking tray covered with baking paper. You will likely need to re-roll your dough a couple of times to make all of your heart shapes, so try to do this touching the dough as little as possible, to prevent it from getting warm and greasy.
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5
Once all of the heart cookies have been placed on the baking try, place in the fridge for 1 hour. This will stiffen the dough up nicely before they go into the oven. At this point, preheat oven to 325u00b0F (170u00b0C).
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6
Remove cookies from the fridge and place into the oven. Cook for 15-20 minutes. Then will depend on the size of your cookies, but they should be removed from the edges of the cookies have browned slightly.
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7
Place the shortbread cookies on a cooling rack to cool completely before decorating.
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8
To decorate, sieve the icing sugar into a bowl and add a little cold water at a time, until the icing is a thick liquid consistency. Split the icing into 2 bowls and place a couple of drops of red food colouring into one of the bowls. Stir to turn the mixture pink.
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9
Using a mixture of the 2 icing colours and melted white chocolate, decorate the cookies however you like. Leave to set in the fridge for 20 minutes.
