Easter biscuits
I spent a pleasant Easter weekend painting walls, but I still found time to make a batch of Easter biscuits (my only concession to the Paschal festival). I used a recipe from my old kitchen stalwart, the Reader’s Digest Book of the Cookery Year, converted from imperial units:
110g softened butter
110g caster sugar, plus extra for dusting
2 eggs, separated
55g currants
170g plain flour
55g rice flour
1 tsp mixed spice
1-2 tbsp milk, if required
Cream the butter until smooth, then beat in the sugar until the mixture is pale and fluffy.
Thoroughly mix in the egg yolks, reserving the whites, then stir in the currants.
Combine the flours and spice in a bowl and gradually sift into the mixture to make a dough that is soft but not sticky. If it is too dry, add the milk a little at a time until you have the right consistency.
On a floured work surface, roll the dough out to a thickness of about half a centimetre, and use a fluted cutter to stamp out rounds. Place them on a baking sheet lined with parchment and bake for 10-20mins at 180°c. They don’t spread during baking but they colour quickly, so keep an eye on them.
After the biscuits have cooled on a rack for a few minutes, brush them with the reserved egg white and dredge a little caster sugar over them to finish.
As you can see, the recipe calls mysteriously for ‘mixed spice’. The British appetite for spiced bread and biscuits was once quite prominent, as a glance at any cookery book from the 19th and early 20th centuries will reveal, but tastes change and their popularity has declined. However, a good spice blend is what really makes or breaks an Easter biscuit. I like the following mixture, from the venerable John Langland via Linda Collister’s The Bread Book:
30g coriander
30g ginger
30g cinnamon
15g nutmeg
10g white pepper
(These are the measurements given, although you can obviously increase or reduce the amounts).
Don’t omit the white pepper! Although only a small amount is present, it’s the note around which the other flavours revolve. There are countless other possible blends to play with, and a quick Google search for ‘mixed spice’ will give you some ideas. Many contain cloves, but I can’t stand the smell or flavour (see also under ‘celery’).
You will also notice that this recipe uses a blend of wheat and rice flour. This is not uncommon in biscuit and cake recipes, where corn flour is also sometimes used. In theory, using a proportion of rice or corn flour gives a crumblier texture than using all wheat flour. I’m not sure I really notice the difference, and you can quite safely substitute the same quantity of wheat flour if that’s all you have.
In other news, I’m still waiting for a phone line to be installed, although I’ve been promised that D-day will be next week. If all goes well, more regular blogging will soon be possible.