Honeybread biscuits with Sark wildflower honey

One of my closest friends has recently had a beautiful baby boy and so I decided to bake up some goodies to help her through those sleep-deprived first weeks. I’ve had a set of new baby cookie cutters in the cupboard for ages and I’d seen this recipe in my most recent Good Food magazine (cut out into very cute bee shapes!) so I decided to give it a go. I had a jar of very special Sark wildflower honey from a recent weekend on the beautiful island of Sark in the Channel Islands and so decided to use it for this recipe.

Making these biscuits is actually very easy – just stick all the ingredients in a food processor and whizz! The original recipe suggested that you could roll and cut the dough straight away – I decided to stick with the Biscuiteers’ method of popping them in the fridge first. To be honest, I’m not sure if this is necessary!

The original recipe just suggested plain icing, but I added lemon juice and a touch of orange blossom water to add a bit of interest and echo the floral flavours of the honey.

However, icing these was not simple! I must remember when I next make biscuits that I should not attempt to ice with more than 2 or 3 colours! Mixing up lots of different colours of line and flooding icing takes ages! And icing biscuits generally takes quite a while! In the end, these weren’t quite as neat as I’d have liked because I had to hurry to get them finished!

Overall, these biscuits were nice and spicy and the honey flavour came through well in the background. I’m not sure that I would worry about putting in really good quality honey next time, as I think that the other flavours meant that the quality of the honey was not really noticeable. I really did like the extra flavour that the lemon and orange flower water gave to the icing.   

                                                                                                                        

Honeybread biscuits with Sark wildflower honey

Makes approximately 20-25 biscuits

Ingredients

1. 300g plain flour
2. 100g diced butter
3. 1 tblsp mixed spice
4. 2 tsp ground ginger
5. 100g light brown soft sugar
6. 1 large egg
7. 100g clear honey

To decorate

1. 500g royal icing sugar
2. 75ml lemon juice or water
3. Couple of drops of orange blossom water (optional)

Method

1. Place all the biscuit ingredients into a food processor and whizz to a smooth dough.
2. Split the dough in half.
3. Place half of the dough between two sheets of baking parchment and roll out to the thickness of a £1 coin. Place in the fridge for 20 minutes.
4. Repeat with the second half of the dough.
5. Pre-heat oven to 180C.
6. Remove dough from fridge, stamp out shapes using chosen cutters and place on a baking tray.
7. Bake for about 10-12 minutes until crisp and golden brown.
8. Place on a wire rack to cool.

To ice

1. Add the water to the royal icing sugar in a large bowl.
2. Stir with a wooden spoon until combined (this stops your kitchen being coated in a fine dusting of icing!)
3. Use an electric mixer to beat the mix (starting on low and increasing to high speed) for about 5 minutes. You are looking for the mix to be bright white and a toothpaste-like consistency (this is “line icing”).
4. Divide the line icing between smaller bowls.
5. Use a skewer to add small amounts of the paste colours to the bowls of icing, adding a little at a time until you reach the desired colour. 
6. Spoon some of the icing into a piping bag with a very small round tip.
7. Pipe the outlines of the shapes. Set aside the rest of the line icing to add details to the iced biscuits.
8. Add water/more juice to the icing left in the bowls until you reach a pouring consistency (this is called “flooding icing”).
9. Spoon into a piping bag or piping bottle.
10. Pipe the flooding icing onto the biscuits to fill the areas outlined on the biscuits.
11. Allow iced biscuits to set.
12. Use remaining line icing and other decorative items to complete the decoration of the biscuits.
13. Leave to dry for at least 24 hours.

Egg-free banana, oat and raisin muffins

Sunday afternoon and I’m waiting to watch the Queen’s Club tennis final but, unsurprisingly, the tennis is suspended due to rain.  Finding a hand of overripe bananas in the fruit bowl, I decided to make use of the time and whip up some banana muffins. I found this recipe on the web and decided to give it a go as it looked fairly simple and we had all of the ingredients in the cupboard.  I added a handful of raisins to the recipe for extra flavour and texture (would probably have used sultanas but we didn’t have any!).

This is a very easy and quick recipe. They are very banana-y and feel very healthy! I put in three bananas and I think that this was slightly too much as the balance of banana to cake wasn’t quite right and this meant that they were slightly sticky in the cases. The texture was generally good though – crisped on top but moist inside.

 
Egg-free banana, oat and raisin muffins

Ingredients

1. 25g/1oz unsalted butter
2. 3 tsp runny honey
3. 2-3 large, ripe bananas
4. 100g/3.5oz plain flour
5. 55g/2oz porridge oats
6. 1 heaped tsp baking powder
7. 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
8. 1/2 tsp cinnamon
9. Handful raisins or sultanas
10. 75ml/2.5fl oz milk            

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 190C/375F/Gas mark 5.
2. Line a muffin tin with paper cases.
3. Melt the butter and honey in a saucepan.
4. Mix together all the dry ingredients in a bowl.
5. Mash the banana and mix with the honey and butter.
6. Add this mixture and the milk to the dry ingredients, stirring until mixed lightly.
7. Spoon into the muffin cases, sprinkling a few extra oats on top.
8. Bake for 25mins until golden brown and firm to touch.

Condensed milk cookies

Stem ginger cookies with lemon icing

Having spent all morning lazing in bed and reading, I decided that I should do something a bit more productive with my Sunday afternoon. Unusually, I didn’t feel like faffing around with fancy decorative icing, so I decided to make some simple biscuits for EHH to take into his work. I had a flick through my recipe files and cook books, but wasn’t feeling particularly inspired so I decided to go with one of my tried-and-tested recipes.

I call these “condensed milk cookies” – they came from Sainsbury’s magazine ages ago, which called them “soft, American-style cookies”. They are amazing – a bit like “Millie’s Cookies” – with a crisp outside and soft, chewy centre. The magazine gave 6 variations – I made three types this weekend: lemon and ginger, oats and honey, and cherry and almond, with slight variations on the magazine’s recipes. I always feel the need to make more than one batch of these – once you’ve opened the tin of condensed milk, it seems a waste not to! However, I have got about half a tin left, so I may need to make some more later in the week!

Cherry and almond cookies

Makes 12
Ingredients

1. 125g soft unsalted butter
2. 125g caster sugar
3. 2 tblsp condensed milk
4. 175g self-raising flour
   Pinch of salt
5. 75g glace cherries, chopped finely
6. 2 tblsp flaked almonds
7. 1 tsp almond essence
8. 75g icing sugar

Method

1. Preheat oven to 150C.
2. Using an electric/stand mixer, cream the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.
3. Beat in the condensed milk and the almond essence.
4. Add the flour and a pinch of salt and mix.
5. Stir in the cherries.
6. Roll into 12 walnut sized balls and space at least 5cm apart on 2 baking trays.
7. Flatten them slightly with the back of a spoon.
8. Scatter each cookie with flaked almonds.
9. Bake for about 25 minutes or until firm at the edges but still soft in the middle.
10. Leave to cool for a few minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.
11. Once cool, drizzle with icing made up from the icing sugar and 1 tblsp water (optional).

Alternatives:
Ginger and Lemon

• For Step 3: Omit almond essence.
• For Step 5: Omit cherries. Instead, add 2 tsp ground ginger, zest of one lemon and 75g of finely chopped crystallised or stem ginger.
• Omit Step 8.
• For Step 11, drizzle with icing made from 75g icing sugar with 1 tblsp lemon juice. 

 


Oats and honey

• For Step 3: Use 1 tblsp of honey and 1 tblsp condensed milk. Omit almond essence.
• For Step 5: Omit cherries. Instead, add 75g oats.
• For Step 8: Drizzle each cookie with honey and scatter with oats.
• Omit Step 11.