hazelnut crisp biscuits

 

The hazelnuts in these biscuits give a lovely flavour and aroma. Despite the sweetness there is a slight tang, almost bitter, probably coming from the skins, which I include, through laziness. They are lovely with a cup of tea or coffee. I know they are popular, because they disappear quickly.

The biscuit is not a shortbread, it is quite crisp.

They are very easy to make, but make sure that they don’t burn, they should be a nut brown. Appropriately.

I am only giving cup measures. A cup is about 2/3 of a mug – or a quarter cup is about the size of a demitasse coffee cup. Really, don’t fret about it. Use a sensible measure as a cup measure, something like a small bowl, and measure everything else in proportion.

INGREDIENTS

1/2 cup of butter or margarine
1 cup light brown sugar (I mix demerera and some brown)
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla essence
1 cup plain flour
1/4 tsp baking poweder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup chopped hazelnuts

METHOD

Prepare two baking trays – lined with baking parchment or buttered and floured.

Set oven to GM 4/350F/180C degrees

quite airy and crisp

Grind up the nuts to the texture you like. I like some finely ground and some coarser bits and I use a hand blender with a lidded chopper attachment.

• Beat the sugar and the butter together with the vanilla essence.
• Beat the egg into the sugar mixture.
• Beat in the flour until it all comes together
• Drop by the teaspoonful onto the prepared sheets, leaving room to spread – press thin if you like

Bake for around 10 minutes – until they are a light nut brown. Keep an eye on them!

sideways but good!

biscuits on a hot day - choc chip and wholemeal?

Despite the Great British Bake Off being back on the TV for a whole week, there has been a dearth of baking in this house. With Kitty's first day back at school, there is a call for biscuits, so I am revisiting this recipe, and I'm going to mess with it.

Although many of us hanker for one of those chewy chocolate chip cookies you see in speciality cookie shops as we nurse a cup of tea at home, somehow when you have them to hand, or you follow the chewy chocolate chip cookie recipes those biscuits deliver too powerful a sugary hit. Even when eaten with coffee. Hence the logic of adding wholemeal flour, and some milk powder. Why milk powder? Because it adds a bit of chewy without too much extra sweetness, after all, some biscuits use condensed milk. Also the powdered stuff is easy to store and doesn't add liquid to the mix.

So, the questions fly, how to get an even biscuit in terms of mix and measure? I like this mixture, which is quite easy to handle, even with two spoons. I have yet to buy myself an ice cream scoop, but I think it might be the way to go. I saw someone using one for biscuit mixture, dolloping out even mounds, and I have to concur: the logic is good. The scoop works for ice cream, it works for the more solid mash, and it works well for biscuit mix. Alright, cookie dough, if you insist on going all American. Add scoop to the shopping list.

Set the oven to Gas Mark 4/350F/180C and line several baking sheets with baking parchment.

Ingredients

• 150g butter
• 50g vanilla caster sugar approx. 2 tbsp
• 90g soft brown sugar approx. 3 tbsp
• 1 egg
• vanilla essence
• 100g plain white flour
• 75g plain wholemeal flour
• 2tbsp powdered milk
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 150g plain chocolate chopped into pieces – I like them the size of a large square pea

Method

1. Beat together the butter and the sugars, adding the vanilla essence.
2. Beat in the egg.
3. Add the flour and keep beating.
4. Add the chocolate pieces.
5. Use two spoons and drop large teaspoonsful of mixture onto the sheet, allowing plenty of room to spread. 

Cook for around 15 minutes, or until golden brown. Allow to cool before removing from baking sheet, or you may lose most of the chocolate.

Makes around 18 large biscuits.

the chocolate chunks are still warm...

choc and hazelnut biscuits, or cookies if you like

Hazelnut and Chocolate Cookies

I've been looking for a good cookie/biscuit recipe for some time, and then I came across this one. Rave reviews all round, along with much overeating on the biscuit front. The secret ingredient, because I don't usually keep it in the house, is condensed milk.

Depending on how long you cook these biscuits they can either be crunchy on the outside with a chewy centre or crunchy all the way through. If you can't wait for them to cool you'll get gooey chocolate too.

This recipe makes about 40 biscuits, if you make the roll about two inches/5cm in diameter. If you don't want 40 biscuits, keep a roll of the dough in the fridge, and eat within a week.

Ingredients

225g butter or margarine

not very round dough...

225g caster sugar

6 tbsp condensed milk

350g self-raising flour

100g dark chocolate

100g hazelnuts

Prep

Chop the roast hazelnuts and chocolate to a size that suits you. If you leave them too large, they will make cutting the dough into slices harder.

Beat together the fat, sugar and condensed milk, until well mixed and pale

Add in the flour and mix thoroughly

Stir through the nuts and chocolate

Divide the dough in two, and make two rolls about 5cm in diameter – using baking parchment will make this easier – and chill for around an hour

Cooking

20m before you are going to cook the cookies, heat your oven to 180C

Cut into slices slightly less than 1cm, say .6cm (joke)

Lay onto baking sheet lined with baking parchment, leave some space between them for spreading

Cook for around 15m or until golden brown

Lemony Almond Shortbread

Makes 30+

This is a mixture of recipes for shortbread, with a mixture of flours, almond, plain flour and a little wholemeal flour. The almonds add a little flavour, and make the biscuits a tiny bit chewy. The lemon flavour comes out. If you are substituting non wheat flour it will make the biscuits crisper, and you don’t need to let the dough rest. If you don’t want to use butter (or don’t have any) it’s best to chill the dough before using it, and the biscuits will cook a little quicker.

Be careful around these biscuits, I’ve just eaten more than I meant to, with a cup of tea. I’m regretting it only because I’m quite uncomfortable. Eating them seemed so right at the time.

200g plain flour (or 175/25 plain/wholemeal mix)
225g salted butter, softened
125g caster sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
1tsp lemon zest (grate really fine)
150g ground almonds

• Beat the butter and sugar together, along with the lemon zest, until creamy. Use a machine to avoid arm ache.
• Beat in the dry ingredients a little at a time. It may not seem likely to come together into a dough, but it will. Don’t add any liquid.
• Press the dough together and allow to rest for half an hour. Up to this point you can prepare the dough ahead and leave it, using it a bit at a time.

When you’re ready to make biscuits set the oven to Gas Mark 3/325F/150C (a moderate oven).

Prepare a baking tray – line it with baking parchment.

Roll out the dough and cut with a cutter if you like – and prick with a fork, or roll balls about the size of a walnut – and flatten with a fork.

Cook for 20 minutes, or until very lightly golden.

Allow to sit for 5 minutes before putting the biscuits on a rack to cool.

choc chop cookies for 6 nations rugby

I maintain that rugby is better than football. With my knees you might assume that I have played the game extensively, but that is not so. I've only latterly admitted to my admiration for the game, and, due to my getting much too overheated watching it even on tv, I've limited my viewing to the 6 nations, with occasional lapses. It's very exhausting, shouting at the telly. I can't imagine how wrung out I'd be if I actually went to watch a match. I'm not very good in crowds and don't manage well with disappointment. Still, there is something compelling about watching men gather in violent, writhing heaps on a muddy field. My family put up with my repeated urging for my boys to get up the other end, pick up the ball and run, darling, run, interspersed with yelps of joy and pain.

In anticipation of the England-France game I booked in with my delightful neighbour and prepared for the emotional exhaustion by cooking a batch of choc chip cookies, with a bit more substance. The original recipe is chewy and quite flat. Kitty told me the chocolate pieces were too large - only once they had cooled, she didn't mind when they were melty, and she hardly had the chance to find that out, since she was scoffing them fresh off the sheets as they came out of the oven. So I added two handfuls of rolled oats, and I blitzed the broken up chocolate a couple of times in the little processor. The result was a slightly bulkier cookie, which needed slightly longer in the oven. Otherwise the recipe was the same choc chip cookies.

In fact I was so busy baking I missed the start of the match. Still, I'm not sure I could have managed more of the match, sugar boost or not. Thank goodness England won.

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.