Friday 29 October 2010

cold day spicy biscuit with tea needed

those darker bits are especially delicious
As the leaves start to fall I start wanting to eat biscuits with my tea. I like these biscuits which have a zingy ginger bite and a warming flavour of cinnamon and cloves.

Maybe you do not like cloves? It's worth giving it a go in these biscuits - even my white-food-only daughter does. Although I'm not sure she even knows what a clove is, still she notices when I forget to put them in.

Here in rainy London cookies are creeping up apace. Back in the deprived days of my childhood had someone asked me for a cookie I wouldn't have had the first idea what they were on about. Now it's common culinary currency. So call these biscuits cookies if you like. You can cook them a bit less and have them chewy, or you can cook and cook again, making them teeth-threateningly crisp. That is the origin of the word biscuit after all - bis=twice, cuit=cooked. And don't worry, noone has lost a tooth to biting these biscuits yet.
jumped ship and ate one
 with vanilla ice cream

RECIPE

Ingredients
250g plain flour
110g unsalted butter
150g caster sugar
1 egg
1tbsp treacle
1 tsp cinnamon
half tsp bicarbonate of soda
half tsp salt (leave out if you use salted butter)
half tsp ground cloves
half tsp ginger
demerera sugar

Method
Preheat oven to 200C/gas mark 4. Line two baking trays with baking parchment, or butter them.

Sift the flour, bicarb, spices and salt if using. I actually just stir the lot around with a whisk.
Cream butter and sugar together, beating until light and creamy.
Add the egg, beating all the time.
Add treacle - don't worry if it's a bit more than a table spoonful.
Fold in flour mixture, stirring until you get a stiff dough.

Put some demerera sugar in a bowl.

Use two teaspoons if you don't want sticky hands - take a spoonful of dough and dip it into the demerera, then put it sugar side up on the baking tray.
leave room for spreading.

Bake for 15m - leave to cool before removing from the tray.

If you manage not to eat all the biscuits at once, they store well. They're also welcome as gifts.

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