Lemon Shortbread Biscuits with Lemon Curd

Yes… I AM shamelessly posting yet another lemon recipe, but these are such delicious biscuits, that I find it impossible not to publish it! The truth is that I always have a stock of lemons available in my kitchen as I use them extensively in my cooking and baking in both sweet and in savoury dishes. Without a doubt I have a lemon addiction, but all things considered, there are worse things than this.

I regularly make my own homemade lemon curd and use it as a filling for various cakes, pastries and other baked goods that I make. I love it dolloped on freshly baked scones or spread on slices of soft white bread. I could quite happily eat it straight from the jar with a teaspoon and will admit to being the reprehensible kind of person who often does exactly that!!! I just love it! It also makes a wonderful filling for these biscuits which if you are a fan of lemon, you will love.

 

These shortbread-like biscuits have the most wonderful texture; at first bite, they are firm, but upon eating they just melt in the mouth. The biscuit dough is lightly flavoured with some finely grated lemon zest, and then the biscuits are sandwiched together with the aforementioned lemon curd and finished off with a light drizzle of lemon glacé icing. These biscuits are definitely a lemon lover’s dream!

 

As the dough contains quite a large proportion of butter, it is soft and a little tricky to work with. It is imperative that you chill it for at least an hour before attempting to roll it out. I find it easier to roll the dough to the correct thickness between two sheets of very lightly floured non-stick baking parchment and then transfer the stamped out biscuits to the prepared baking trays using a palette knife.

 

I used a large heart-shaped cookie cutter, but you can use whatever shape you like, but be aware that smaller biscuits may require less baking time, so keep an eye on them. I also stamped out a circle from half of the biscuits which I used as the ‘top’ biscuit in each sandwiched pair. Again, you don’t have to do this, but I think it’s nice to reveal a little of the filling on each finished biscuit.

 

These are fun biscuits, and other than the dough being a little sticky to work with, relatively simple to make. Whenever I make them, they tend to be snapped up in no time at all and I am regularly asked to make them for cake sales etc.
 

Ingredients:

225g butter, softened
125g icing sugar
1 large lemon, finely grated zest

2 large egg yolks

300g plain flour

To sandwich the biscuits together:

115g lemon curd (see recipe here) or use a good quality store-bought version

To finish:

100g icing sugar

Juice of ½ lemon

Method:

1. Place the butter, icing sugar and lemon zest in a large mixing bowl and using a hand-held electric mixer, cream together until light a fluffy. Add the egg yolks and mix again, until fully incorporated. Add the flour and using a wooden spoon, work into the other ingredients to form a dough.

2. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and knead briefly to bring together into a ball (the dough will be quite soft, but try to resist the urge to add more flour). Wrap in cling-film and refrigerate for at least an hour.

3. Preheat the oven to 170C/Fan Oven 150C/Gas Mark 3. Line two or three large baking trays with non-stick baking parchment and set aside.

4. Roll the dough out thinly to a thickness of about 5mm between two sheets of lightly floured non-stick baking parchment. Use a large (about 10cms wide at widest point) heart-shaped cookie cutter to stamp out individual biscuits. Stamp out a small circle (about 2cms in diameter) from the centre of half of the heart shaped biscuits. Using a palette knife, carefully lift the stamped out biscuits onto the prepared baking trays, leaving about 2cms between each as they will spread a little as they bake.

5. Bake in the preheated oven for 8-12 minutes or until just beginning to colour at the edges. Remove from the oven and allow to cool on the baking trays for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling completely.

To finish:

6. Place the icing sugar and lemon juice together in a small bowl and mix together to form a smooth, but slightly runny glacé icing. Place the icing into a disposable piping bag and snip the very end of the tip off to create a small hole. Pipe lines of the icing over the biscuits with the cut-out centres and allow to set.

7. Put a dollop (about 1tsp) of lemon curd in the centre of the underside of the un-iced biscuits (i.e. the side that was against the baking parchment when they were baking) and spread out a little before sandwiching together with one of the iced top biscuits.

Make 14-16 large sandwiched biscuits.
 

Viennese Shortbread Fingers

Every now and again, I like to make a big batch of biscuits to have on hand in the biscuit tin… something nice to nibble on with my beloved cup of tea. These days there are many varieties of biscuit for sale in the shops and supermarkets, but ultimately, I prefer something homemade, if at all possible. Making your own biscuits/cookies is usually a very quick and easy thing to do and they really do taste so much better than their mass-produced cousins.

 

When I was a child there wasn’t the choice that there is nowadays in the shops and the most decadent biscuits we ever bought were chocolate-covered digestives… and we only had those when guests were expected! Other than that it was plain Digestives or Rich Tea. Interestingly, my grandmother who played a huge role in influencing my love of cookery, never really baked biscuits… the only thing I can ever recall her making was shortbread or flapjacks, but nothing more adventurous than that, though both of these tasted wonderful. I thought my friend Sara who lived across the road was so lucky, because her mum used to make Millionaire’s Shortbread….which to me, at that age, seemed like the ultimate in hedonistic home-baking. To this day whenever I make Millionaire’s Shortbread, I always think of how envious I felt of Sara and her brother and sisters! See my recipe for Millionaire’s Shortbread here.

 

Most home-baked biscuits can be stored quite successfully in an air-tight tin for a few days, unlike those that are commercially produced which seem to stay crisp and crunchy for a far longer time, courtesy of the preservatives and anti-humectants that tend to be included. Yes; biscuits are an indulgence, and by no stretch of the imagination could they be considered a dietary necessity, but if I’m going to treat myself, I’d far prefer to eat something that contains the best of ingredients and where I know exactly what has been used. On that basis, I don’t mind that homemade biscuits may not last long as store-bought versions, because they just taste far superior and usually far more delicious!

 

This is a great recipe; really simple to make and results in a short and buttery biscuits. Rather than use caster or granulated sugar for sweetness, powdery icing sugar is used. This along with the inclusion of some cornflour makes a biscuit that just melts in the mouth. The baked biscuits can be sandwiched together with vanilla flavoured buttercream or a splodge of jam if desired, but I like them just dipped in some melted dark chocolate.

 

The key thing when making these biscuits is to allow the butter to soften to room temperature so that all the other ingredients can be incorporated easily to create a soft dough that can be piped. I used a star nozzle fitted to a disposable piping bag to create ‘fingers’, but you could also pipe rosettes, about 5cms in diameter if preferred.
 

Ingredients:

250g butter, very soft but not melted
60g icing sugar

225g plain flour

70g cornflour

½ tsp vanilla extract/paste

To finish:

100g dark chocolate, melted
 

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 160C/Fan Oven 140C/Gas Mark 3. Line two large baking trays with non-stick baking parchment and set aside.

2. Place the butter and icing sugar into a large mixing bowl and cream together until light and fluffy (about 3 minutes) with a hand-held electric mixer.

3. Sift the plain flour and cornflour together and gradually mix into the butter mixture along with the vanilla extract/paste to create a soft dough. Do not over-mix as this will result in ‘tougher’ biscuits.

4. Spoon the dough into a disposable piping bag fitted with a 1cm star nozzle. Pipe out 6-7cm long fingers onto the line baking trays leaving about 2cms between each ‘finger’. You should get about 30 biscuits. Bake in the preheated oven for 15-17 minutes until barely coloured. Remove the trays from the oven and allow the biscuits to cool for about 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling.

To finish:

5. Dip one end of each biscuit into the melted chocolate and lay on baking parchment to harden.

Makes approximately 30 biscuits.
 

Ginger Crunch

When I was a child, my favourite biscuits were Gingernuts. I have never been a fan of dunking biscuits into tea – my beloved beverage of choice, as they invariably get all soggy and disintegrate into an unpleasant looking sludge at the bottom of the cup. The only biscuits that I occasionally dunk are Gingernuts as their soakage capacity seems far superior to that of any other biscuit or cookie! The love of a tea/ginger combination has stayed with me into adulthood and, to this day, I still have a soft-spot for anything ginger-flavoured to nibble on with my cup of tea and I am always eager to try new recipes that include ginger! I have been experimenting with recipes for a tea brack with added ginger and once I have perfected the recipe, I will, of course, post it on the blog.

The great thing about ginger is that in comes in a number of different forms, each of which can be used in baking. I often make a ginger cake which uses ground ginger (the root is dried and then ground to a powder), stem ginger (ginger preserved in syrup) and fresh ginger (which can be grated and is very fragrant). In the following recipe I use both ground ginger and ginger syrup and the result is an intensely ginger-flavoured biscuit.

 

These biscuits consist of a ginger flavoured shortbread, topped with ginger icing, which sets to a fudgy consistency which is absolutely addictive. A version of these biscuits is hugely popular in Australia and New Zealand, but to be honest, I had never come across it before and after a little tweaking was delighted with the results. The biscuits are sweet, but the fiery warmth of the ginger prevents them from becoming sickeningly so. What I really loved about them was the contrast between the crunchy shortbread base and the fudgy topping! Yummy!

This is a fairly straightforward recipe. I used Opies ginger syrup to flavour the icing, but if you can’t get this just substitute the same amount of golden syrup.

Ingredients:

150g butter, softened
100g caster sugar
225g plain flour
2tsp ground ginger

1tsp baking powder

Icing:

150g butter

60ml ginger syrup (or golden syrup if unavailable)

300g icing sugar

1tblsp ground ginger
 

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180C/Fan Oven 160C/Gas Mark 4. Line a shallow 20x25cm (or similar sized) baking tin with non-stick baking parchment and set aside.
2. Place the butter and sugar into a large mixing bowl and using a hand-held electric mixer, beat together until light and fluffy.
3. Sift the flour, baking powder and ground ginger together and add to the butter mixture, mixing everything together with a wooden spoon until a dough just starts to form. Press the dough evenly into the prepared tin and level the surface with a back of a spoon. Bake in the preheated oven for 20-22 minutes until a light golden brown. Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely (do not remove the shortbread from the tin). Once completely cooled, cover with the shortbread with the icing.

Icing:

4. Place the butter and syrup in a medium sized saucepan over a moderate heat. Once the butter has melted add the icing sugar and ground ginger and stir with a whisk over the heat for a further 2 minutes until you have a smooth icing with no pockets of icing sugar remaining. Pour the icing over the cooled shortbread and set aside to cool and set. Once the icing has set, cut the shortbread into bars/squares.

Makes 20-24 squares.
 

Almond & Pistachio Cantucci

These are such great biscuits… and so incredibly easy to make.  These are biscuits in the true sense of the word, in that they are twice baked! The word ‘biscuit’ is derived from the French and prior to that the Latin for ‘twice-baked’ (bis = twice; coquere = cooked)… And these cantucci are baked twice, firstly in a loaf and then sliced into individual biscuits and dried out in the oven.

Cantucci are a type of Italian biscuit, often dipped into sweet wine at the end of a meal. Whilst I am not claiming that an Italian would declare my version to be absolutely authentic, I can assure you that the finished biscuits are delicious.

 

As regular readers of my posts will know, I am on a bit of a pistachio crusade at the moment, eagerly trying all manner of different recipes that use this fabulously tasty, almost sweet nut. Here I have used whole pistachios along with whole blanched almonds, but to be honest you could use only pistachios or whatever other nuts you would prefer.

 

This is an incredibly simple recipe and the biscuits keep for ages. When baked for the second time, they are quite hard, but this is the way that they should be – perfect for dipping into some vin santo at the end of a meal! One piece of advice… use a large serrated knife to slice the biscuits after their first baking – it gives the cleanest cut.
 

Ingredients:

300g plain flour
200g caster sugar
50g whole blanched almonds

50g whole pistachios (unsalted)

1 lemon, juice and finely grated zest

3 large eggs, lightly beaten
 

Method:

1. Line a large baking tray with non-stick baking parchment and set aside.

2. Place the flour, caster sugar, nuts and lemon zest in a large bowl and mix together so that everything is well incorporated. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and pour in the lemon juice and eggs.

3. Use a wooden spoon to mix everything together. The dough will be quite soft, but don’t worry about this. Turn out on to a lightly floured work surface and knead briefly. Form into a log shape about 8cms x 20cms and place on the prepared baking tray. Allow to rest in the fridge for 20 minutes.

4. Preheat the oven to 180C/Fan Oven 160C/Gas Mark 4.  Bake the biscuit log for 15-20 minutes until a light golden brown colour. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 160C/Fan Oven 140C/Gas Mark 2.

5. Remove the log from the baking tray and slice width-ways into thin slices about 1cm thick. Place on the baking tray and bake for a further 15 minutes, making sure that they do not colour too much.

6. Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely.
 

Makes 20-24 biscuits.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Florentines

Biscuit week on the Great British Bake Off and the contestants were challenged to bake a batch of savoury biscuits for their signature bake; a three dimensional biscuit scene for the showstopper challenge and florentines for the technical challenge.

On the face of it baking a batch of biscuits seems like a fairly easy task, but whilst variations within a baked batch of biscuits are tolerated and often welcomed for their home-spun charm in the home kitchen, they most certainly aren’t in the GBBO tent! Here, in addition to the biscuits tasting delicious, uniformity is the order of the day.

Once again this week, I have decided to try my hand at attempting my version of the bake that was set to the contestants in the technical challenge. Although florentines seem quite easy to make there are a few pitfalls along the way to look out for. Even slightly over-baking can result in biscuits that taste very burnt whilst under-baking can result in a biscuit that is too chewy. Coating the underside of the baked biscuits in chocolate is also a little tricky as you have to wait until the chocolate has cooled as is on the verge of setting again before attempting to apply it and create the wavy pattern that is so characteristic of traditional florentines.

Florentines should be crunchy on the outside but only very slightly chewy nearer the centre. They should also taste sweetly nutty in every bite. The addition of chocolate adds a little taste of luxury and textural contrast. I favour the use of dark chocolate when coating the florentines because I think it strikes the right balance against the sweetness contained in the biscuits, but you can use white or milk chocolate if you prefer.

Florentines, along with shortbread are biscuits that I very much associate with Christmas and the New Year, but after having made them here and knowing now how relatively simple they are to make, I will definitely be making them again and not keeping them confined to the festive season only.

Many versions of florentines, including the one that Mary Berry gave on this week’s programme include dried fruit or mixed peel along with the nuts. I have decided to keep it very simple here and have made an almond and ginger version of florentines, which I have coated in dark chocolate. I love the spicy warmth that the ginger gives the florentines and think that this goes so well with the almonds and chocolate. I have also added a little hint of fruitiness with the addition of some finely grated orange zest, but you can leave this out, if you prefer.

Ingredients:

25g butter
75g caster sugar
3tblsp double cream
1 heaped tblsp plain flour
65g flaked almonds
50g preserved stem ginger in syrup, drained and finely diced

Finely grated zest of 1 orange

125g dark chocolate, melted
 

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180C/Fan Oven 160C/Gas Mark 4. Line a large baking tray with non-stick baking parchment and set aside.

2. Place the butter, sugar and cream in a medium sized saucepan over a moderate heat and stir continuously until the sugar has dissolved.

3. Stir in the flour and mix through using a wooden spoon. Add the almonds, stem ginger and orange zest and mix these through until thoroughly combined.

4. Drop teaspoons of the mixture on the prepared baking sheet, spacing them well apart, leaving about 6cms between each. Bake in the preheated oven for about 7-8 minutes or until golden brown. Remove them from the oven and whilst they are still hot, neaten the edges. When cool enough to handle remove to a wire rack to finish cooling completely before decorating with the melted chocolate.

To finish:
5. Using a small palette knife spread cooled melted chocolate over the underside of the biscuits and then run a fork through the chocolate ion a wavy pattern. Return to the cooling rack with the chocolate side facing upwards, to allow the chocolate to harden.
 

Serves 4.