08 January 2010
Recipes - Oranges And Lemons For Really Great Homemade Biscuits
While snowed in in the cold countryside of Northumberland, we enjoyed some warming chai as well as delicious mulled wine using our organic Fairtrade mulling wine spices. I also concocted a couple of citrus based biscuits, with one of them coming from the Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall's great cook book for Granny's.
Here they are:
Classic lemon biscuits
75g/ 3oz softened butter
75g/ 3oz Fairtrade caster sugar
150g/ 6oz Sunflours plain flour
¼ tsp sea salt
Grated peel from 1 unwaxed lemon
1 egg yolk from a free range hen
Some cold water (this may be needed)
1 tbsp Fairtrade icing sugar
Pre-heat the oven to 165oC/ 330oF and lightly oil 2 - 3 baking trays.
Cream butter and sugar together, then add the rest of the ingredients to the bowl and stir together with a wooden spoon. It will be slightly crumbly, but with a bit of kneading and perhaps a teaspoon or two of cold water, you will get a light paste.
Lightly flour a surface and roll out to about ½ cm thick and cut into shapes. We used all sorts of shapes including using some oval shapes from my great grandmother.
Put the shapes on the baking trays and bake for 7 - 10 minutes, but watch them carefully as they will suddenly be cooked. We used an Aga and found that the back of the tray cooked very quickly and some got burnt the first time around.
Remove from oven when just turning golden, then leave to cool a bit before carefully transferring to a wire cooking rack. Sprinkle with icing sugar in a tea strainer.
Orange biscuits
115g/ 4oz sliced almonds
115g/ 4oz Fairtrade caster sugar
85g/ 3oz softened butter
55g/ 2oz self-raising flour
Grated peel and juice from 2 oranges (you may only need 1½ of these)
Pre-heat the oven to 165oC/ 330oF and lightly oil 2 - 3 baking trays.
Mix all the ingredients together except the orange juice. Now add juice from 1½ oranges and stir together. Check the consistency which should be like a sticky batter.
Drop a teaspoon dollop onto the baking trays and set them apart as they will spread out very thinly.
Cook for 7 - 10 minutes and remove when just turning golden brown at the edges. Then leave to cool a bit before carefully transferring to a wire cooking rack.
The lemon biscuits are classic firm biscuits like a harder shortbread, while the orange biscuits are wonderfully chewy and moreish. All-in-all they lasted about 20 minutes.
