Tuesday 12 May 2015

Lemony jammie deliciousness

This week is all about lemony deliciousness with the Lemon Jammies biscuits from the Baking Bible. I missed these a few weeks ago when the Alpha Bakers tested them out but I was really keen to make them since I love lemony flavours. So it was lucky that a catch up week turned up while I still had all the lemons I bought but didn't get to use. 
And I wasn't disappointed. These biscuits are plain butter biscuits flavoured with lemon zest and stuck together with lemon curd. I can't stress how delicious these are - I loved them and so did my testers. I'll definitely be making these again. I wasn't even put off by the fiddlyness of cutting out and sticking together.

The recipe starts with two tablespoons of lemon zest - that took a whole lot of lemons.


There was a heavenly scent when I opened the food processor after whizzing the sugar and lemon zest together. The recipe is simple to make in the processor, you just add the butter to the sugar/zest mixture then pulse in the flour.


The dough straight out of the food processor is crumbly but is easily pressed together through the plastic wrap. This dough is up in the top ten for tasty raw doughs.


It really is good to divide the dough into smaller amounts and to roll it out slightly before you rest it in the fridge. That way the dough pieces are in the right shape for rolling later and you can control the temperature of the dough once you start rolling and cutting. Thanks Rose and my fellow Alpha Bakers for these tips.


I used a recipe for lemon curd from Stephanie Alexander's The Cook's Companion. Her recipes are very reliable and always delicious. The lemon curd was no exception. It looks orange in the photo although it was really a deep yellow - the egg yolks were very deep orange.


It's very satisfying to line the biscuits up neatly and it helps to check my rather cavalier shape cutting system. I was pretty happy that we're in the dry season now so the humidity is much lower. This makes the dough easier to deal with and the cook a lot happier, so biscuit making is much calmer all round. 

I used my Christmas biscuit cutter which has a removable middle cutter, so centring the round was not a problem. Happy days.


The advantage of making these after my fellow Alpha Bakers is that I can learn by their experiences. I decided to use a plain cut out for the middle which meant that there was minimal effort in lining up the biscuit shapes when sticking them together.


Some of them turned out slightly oval :) but it wasn't too noticeable and frankly lemon curd cures all ills, including slightly skew-whiff biscuit shapes.


Next week we're making Chocolate Oriolos.  mmmmmm chocolate...

8 comments:

  1. Very pretty cookies! You are right, lemon curd cures all. These were a big hit in my house, too. Reading a post from a catch up week always makes me nostalgic

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    1. Yes I think lemon curd is almost medicinal!

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  2. These look delicious…the dough sounds wonderful with all the zest :) I like that recipe from Stephanie Alexander too.

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  3. i love Stephanie Alexander. your cookies look great. i thought it was intentional having the oval center. I know that Stephanie is considered to be the Julia Child of AU and one of the nicest things ever to happen to me when i participated in the Melbourne food and wine festival was to have her attend my demo and then buy my book! Julia Child always said "ever apolgoize; no one knows what you intended the dish to be."

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    1. The ovals did look quite nice :) You'll have to come back and visit Melbourne again and meet your Australian Alpha Bakers!

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  4. These look perfect! Reminds me of how delicious they were!

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  5. I'm glad you got a chance to make these good cookies! They look wonderful.

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  6. these cookies were so good, the fresh lemon flavor that come slowly from the zest just make it a real keeper.

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