I think we have the egg free biscuit recipe covered now. I’ve made a couple of hundred and I’m getting the hang of it, to the point I’m sure I could stand up and guide a class through to a satisfactory conclusion (as long as I don’t give a choice of flavours and as long as I remind them to divide the mix equally in their pair!)
It’s a versatile recipe. I made lemon flavour on Monday night (and lemon flavour with poppy seeds, which was quite good). I followed that up with ginger and caraway flavours on Tuesday morning. The lemon is good (using hand cut zest after finding that the zester has disappeared from the shared kitchen).Vanilla is a popular choice with visitors – that’s easy, with just a quarter teaspoon of flavouring. The ginger wasn’t very gingery so we need more experimentation there (two teaspoons looks a lot when you add it but it isn’t by the time you eat it). I’m going to try 2 tsp of fresh ground ginger next time – mine’s been hanging about a while.
Today I did orange. I used a zester from home and produced some long pieces, which I decided not to cut as I thought ‘what harm can they do?’ Well, as the bits stretch between two biscuits they can make a mess of the cutting. Next time I will cut them shorter.
Finally I tried it without dairy – substituting rapeseed oil. It made decent biscuits, though they don’t seem to colour up the same in the oven. Texture is a bit crumbly and the taste isn’t all it could be. All in all it’s a biscuit you’d do if pressed for a dairy-free biscuit, or for a bet, but not for fun.
The group enjoyed making the vanilla flavoured recipe and taking them home in paper bags. They had a tough day working with poultry in the morning and doing the tree measurements in the afternoon so biscuit making in the middle of the day, and biscuit tasting at the end of the afternoon was a nice change of pace.
The recipe –
Ingredients:
175 g plain flour
110 g softened butter
50 g caster sugar
Method:
Rub the butter into the flour
Add the sugar
Form a ball of dough and roll out about 5 mm thick
You should get at least 18 – I used a small cutter and managed to get 25 out of it
Flavouring:
Zest of two lemons and quarter teaspoon of lemon essence
Zest of an orange and quarter teaspoon of orange essence
Quarter teaspoon vanilla flavouring
1 tablespoon caraway seeds
Still working out the ginger, and haven’t decided on a measurement for the poppy seeds yet as I just sprinkled some on.
When to add the flavouring? I put it in at the beginning, Julia tells me it should go in at the end. Seems to work either way.
Sorry about the lack of science. 😉
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Thank-you for the recipe – I must try it out sometime for a church coffee morning.
Further testing shows that they go sift quite quickly. Must eat them faster next time!
😀
Or even “soft”.
😉
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I’m relieved to see that you now seem to know what you are doing. 🙂
It’s just an illusion, though it’s difficult to go wrong eating biscuits. 😉
Variety is the spice of life, thanks for the recipe.
Thanks – it was fun trying it out. 😉