All posts tagged: biscuits

What to Do With the Urge to Cook

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I cook an evening meal for my family every night and eighty per cent of the time I enjoy the process more than I enjoy the meal. I’m a good cook, (she says with eyes modestly downcast), but as with most cooks, I tend to lose interest in the product of my labour by the time it’s placed on the table. I think this is related to saturation of the senses during the cooking process and, more prosaically, nibbling as you cook. This lack of interest in the finished dish is no bad thing as I, like most middle-aged people, have to keep a weather eye on unwanted weight gain. Yes, terribly dreary, but this is how it is. And given this state of affairs – enjoying cooking but not the weight gain associated with eating all that I make – what can I do? I cannot force-feed my family or harass passers-by to come inside and eat cakes and jellies. So I decided to harness my cooking urges and, through a simple online arrangement …

The Right Crunch

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I made a batch of biscotti, the Italian twice baked biscuit, once that was so hard one could gnaw and suck them, like a baby with a rusk, for an awfully long time before getting anything like a satisfying crunchy mouthful. The unyielding nature of these biscotti was my fault. Too long in the oven, I’m afraid. And I’ve also made butter biscuits so soft and crumbly that I needed a spoon to get them into my mouth. Yep, not long enough in the oven. And then, like Goldilocks with her third bowl of porridge, I found Dan Lepard’s Blueberry Choc Chip Cookies. As I placed balls of the mixture on the baking trays I was plagued with doubt and suspected the cooked biscuit would have a sludgy interior encased in a thin skin of crunch. Now interior sludge is not a bad thing, particularly in a chocolate pudding, but I wanted a crunchy biscuit all the way through and, by golly, I got it. This is a great recipe and one can fiddle with …

Almond Biscuits

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These almond biscuits are easy to make and even easier to eat. I think this is a Greek recipe but it was given to me by an Italian relative. You have to have access to lots and lots of almond meal, which is not cheap. But not far from where I live are the Willunga almond orchards and while pottering in the district recently I just happened upon bags of almond meal at an outrageously good price. Immediately I thought of these biscuits. And then I made them. And then gave them away. But I’ll make them again one day. You need three cups of almond meal, which is actually 300 grams, which doesn’t sound like much but it is. Mix a cup of castor sugar in to the almond meal and add a few drops of almond essence. Lightly beat three eggwhites and mix into the almond/sugar mixture until you have a firm dough. Roll out into small sausage shapes, no bigger than your thumb, roll in flaked almonds and bake for 15 minutes …