Summer is over, the world is grey, I am back from holiday and have to go to work tomorrow. BUT At least it is biscuit week on bake off! We will always have sugary treats. In fact, now all major news outlets have stopped quacking on about how to get a “perfect beach body” we may even be able to enjoy them undisturbed. For the ten minutes we have until the “Christmas party perfect booty makeover”. But I digress.
I am trying to make the best of a bad job and embrace the “joys of fall” with this bake. What I mean by this is, I put loads of cinnamon in them. Cinnamon is one of the few consolations of the ten months of the year it is impossible to dry your clothes outside, or cycle to work without risking hypothermia.
Like last week’s Lazy Pirate Cake, this recipe is easy. Chuck everything in a mixer and GO. The only difficult but is the cutting and rand ferrying of the biscuits. I got cross with this and have included a suggestion for what to do if you do too. Life is too short to take shit from bakery items.
You will need –
125g butter or nice margarine
100g soft light brown sugar (plus extra for sprinkling)
1 egg
200g plain flour
1tsp vanilla essence
1/4 tsp baking powder
A dash of salt
A good shake of any spices that you like! Cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg…? I used all these, plus some allspice. We’re going for a pumpkin spice latte kind of vibe.
For the icing –
A big blob of butter (100g?)
A fair dash if icing sugar (100g again???)
A scant half teaspoon almond extract
- Beat the sugar and eggs together, like you’re making a cake. This is not shortbread so you don’t have to worry about over working it, hurrah!
- Chuck in your egg and beat again
- Pop everything else in and mix until it’s a dough. Stick it in the fridge for at least 2 hours.
- Preheat your oven to 160-180, depending on its aggressiveness.
- Roll out the dough to the thickness of a pound coin on a floured surface. Cut out shapes and transfer to a baking sheet with silicone baking paper on it, or whatever you use to make your biscuits not glue themselves to the sheet.
- Bake for 10 mins and check. They might need another couple of ticks if they don’t look done enough – you want them just to be STARTING to go brown.
- Alternatively, if you can’t be arsed with this soft melty dough messing you about like this, just roll the dough straight out onto the silicone sheet and bake as a block, cutting out your shapes when they are straight from the oven. It is more wasteful of ingredients, but obviously you can privately eat the off cut bits in the kitchen as a reward for tidying up.
- You can also add icing to these. Wizz up all your icing ingredients until you get a smooth liquidy paste. Spoon onto biscuits and maybe sprinkle a little cinnamon atop them. This will give you maximum Autumn points.
- Eat with a big cup of tea, while looking forward to wearing scarves again.
