- 350g/12oz plain flour, plus extra for dusting
- 1-3 tsp rosewater, depending on taste and strength
- 2 tsp fennel seeds, 1 tsp ground and 1 left whole
- ½ tsp vanilla bean paste
- 125g/4½oz unsalted butter, cubed
- 90g/3¼oz caster sugar
- 90g/3¼oz light soft brown sugar
- 1 free-range egg
- 2 free-range egg whites
- 400g/14oz icing sugar
- 2 tsp lemon juice
- 1 tsp glycerine
- red gel food colouring
- purple gel food colouring
- For the biscuits, put the flour, rosewater, ground fennel, fennel seeds, and vanilla paste in a food processor. Give a quick pulse. Add the butter and pulse until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
- Add the sugars and the egg and blend to a dough. Tip the dough out, knead lightly, cover in cling film and refrigerate for 10 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/Gas 4. Line a baking tray with baking paper. If you don’t have a teardrop cutter, cut out a 9cm/3½in-tall tear-drop shape from card to use as a template.
- Lightly flour a work surface and roll out the dough to 5mm/¼in thickness. Cut out 24 biscuits using the cutter or template. Use a skewer to cut a small circle from the narrow part of the teardrop (this will be used to thread ribbon through).
- Place the biscuits on the prepared tray and bake for 15 minutes.
- Meanwhile, make the icing. Whisk the egg whites in a large bowl until frothy. Spoon by spoon, add the icing sugar until the mixture is quite thick. Mix in the lemon juice and glycerine.
- Divide one-third of the icing between two bowls. Colour one of the bowls with a drop of the red food colouring and the other with a drop of the purple.
- Put half the white icing in a shallow bowl. Swirl in some of the pink and purple icings. Dip one side of the biscuits into the icing one by one and shake to even out. Leave them to cool on a wire rack.
- In a separate bag, place the remaining white icing and pipe henna design on top of the pink swirled icing. Leave to dry.