Love Heart Cookies aka Iced Biscuits with egg-free Royal Icing

By lucylox on February 13, 2025

What could be more joyful and full of love than some tiny dairy-free and egg-free iced cookies, made to look like Love Hearts (or called conversation hearts in the US)

These super cute little heart shaped biscuits are crisp and crunchy but also buttery and crumbly as they're a kind of thinly rolled shortbread. This texture is the perfect vehicle for the icing as they're robust enough to decorate but also delightful to eat.

But these cute little valentines cookies not only look like Love Hearts, they taste like them too! I use a small amount of ground up sweets in the icing to give the Love Hearts zing and it really works well, you get an immediate subtle fizz which is reminiscent of the little powdery sweets. But should you wish for just plain Royal Icing then omit the ground up Love Hearts and use an extra 15g icing sugar instead.

In the run up to Christmas I finally worked out the perfect Vegan royal icing for cookies, that pipes well, sets firmly but has a soft yielding bite. The only non-vegan iced cookies I've eaten have a hard icing that I don't find particularly pleasant, this icing on the other hand looks just as pretty but has a far nicer texture.

Royal icing usually contains egg white to help it set - here i've used glucose or golden syrup and dairy-free milk, based on an idea from Felicity Cloake in The Guardian Feast. I've tweaked the recipe to get the perfect ratios and made it entirely dairy-free. Definitely save this recipe for whenever you want to amke some super pretty iced biscuits.

I don't know if I actually prefer the cookies without the writing, as they look a bit more classy, but for full effect the little piped messages do get the Live Heart vibe going!

I have to admit that it's a bit of a faff doing multiple different colours and adding the messages; it's fun but you do need a bit of time and a handful of piping bags. So if you wanted to cut corners, why not just use one colour?

I've also used this icing for iced Christmas cookies to great effect, so definitely save this recipe and come back to it later 😊

Love Heart Cookies - Vegan Iced Biscuits

crisp shortbread, topped with zingy sherbet infused Royal Icing

dairy-free, egg-free, nut-free, soya-free, sesame-free, vegetarian and vegan

piping bags

For the crisp shortbread cookies

75 g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 pinch salt
225 g plain flour
150 g dairy-free butter (the kind you buy in a wrapper)

For the Royal Icing

250 g icing sugar (sifted)
15 g crushed Love Heart sweets (or use extra 15g icing sugar)
2 tbsp glucose syrup (or golden syrup)
3 tbsp dairy-free milk
food colouring

Firstly make the cookie dough: Stir the sugar, salt and vanilla into the powder.
Cut the cold butter into small cubes and rub into the flour mixture until you get a crumbly dough
Roll the dough out between two sheets of parchment paper until you get an even 3-4mm thickness
Place in the fridge to chill for 30 minutes
Preheat the oven to 160℃
Stamp out small heart shapes (or whatever shape you wish). Place on a lined baking sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes until starting to turn golden around the edges.
Move to a wire rack to fully cool

To make the Royal Icing

Sift the icing sugar into a large bowl. Stir in the crushed Love Hearts (if using)
Add the glucose syrup and milk and stir to form a thick, glossy icing.
Divide into small bowls, keep one white, and then add a couple of drop of food colouring to the other bowls to give lovely pastel icings. Place each icing into separate piping bags
To decorate
Snip the very tip off the icing bag. Draw a heart shape onto each biscuit and then fill in.
Using the white icing, write Lovely messages on top of each icing heart
Leave to set.
These will firm up in about 10 minutes but ideally leave for a good few hours to fully firm up before placing in a tin or packaging up.