Preparation

• 1
  Zest the orange. Place the sugar, the softened butter, cut into cubes, and the orange zest in a food processor and cream together well.
• 2
  Tip in the sieved flour, add the ground almonds and mix together. Add a teaspoon of milk at a time and mix in enough to reach the required consistency.
• 3
  Use your hands to bring the mixture together into a ball of dough, wrap it in cling film then chill in the fridge for 20-30 minutes.
• 4
  Line 2 baking trays with baking parchment and preheat the oven to 180 degrees, or 160 degrees fan oven.
• 5
  Roll out the dough fairly thinly on a floured surface and use a small heart shaped cutter to cut out the biscuits. Take another tiny heart shaped cutter and cut out a piece in the centre of half of the biscuits. [The number of biscuits you can cut out will, of course, depend on the size of your cutters.] You can put together and roll out the pieces you have cut out to make more biscuits.
• 6
  Place the biscuits flat on the prepared trays and bake for 10-12 minutes until just pale brown
• 7
  they will still be soft, don’t overbake them. Leave to cool and harden.
• 8
  Spread jam onto the bottom biscuits, with more in the centre and just thinly spread on the edges. Carefully press the top biscuits in place, with the jam showing through the tiny heart in the middle
• 9
  these biscuits are quite soft and crumbly in texture so you’ll need to be gentle.
• 10
  Finish by dusting the biscuits with icing sugar.