Gingersnap Biscuits

This week the Alpha Bakers are cooking Gingersnaps. Follow the link to see how the other group members fared this week. It's quite remarkable to see how different the same recipe can look when made by different bakers in different locations.

These biscuits are really delicious and very quick and easy to make. I love ginger and the flavour is quite strong in these, with a generous three teaspoons giving them a bit of residual spicy heat. They're also rather handsome (in the main).

 

Rose suggests a baking time for these biscuits which leaves them a bit chewy. I don't mean to be a pedant but the name does imply a certain kind of texture. (Although it occurs to me now that the snap could refer to the instant it takes to make them). Preferring a 'snappier' biscuit (similar to the delicious teeth-blunting gingernut biscuits) I cooked mine a bit longer.

I made the UK version that Rose provided as an alternative primarily because I thought they would be crunchier. The recipe involves melting butter and golden syrup, mixing it with self-raising flour, spices and an egg (UK version). 

The dough turned out a bit crumbly with just the one egg and I probably should have added a bit more egg as the recipe suggested. When I came to bake them they didn't flatten out that much and I needed to cook them longer just to get to chewy let alone crunchy.

You roll the dough into tablespoon sized balls. Make sure they don't have corners...

I lost track of the time but I may have baked them for just under 20 minutes and they were still reasonably chewy.  I had to use the convection microwave again which may have affected the timing. I suspect they would be delicious however long you cooked them. A few Alpha Bakers suggested adding glace ginger which I think would be a great variation.

Next week is Swedish Apricot Walnut Bread. My biga is waiting in the fridge...

Almond Coffee Crisps

I love Christmas time for many reasons, many of them related to childhood nostalgia I suspect, but also for the opportunities for baking and cooking special dishes. These biscuits fall squarely into the special category, being quite unusual in texture and flavour.

This post will have to be short and sweet (haha) since I'm away from home and working from my iPad. I made these biscuits a week or so ago but Christmas travel and general busy-ness got in the way of posting about them.

This recipe calls for instant coffee powder.  I couldn't find the recommended brand but Google recommended a similar one I could find in the supermarket. Unfortunately it wasn't powdery so I decided in the pursuit of accuracy to whiz it into a powder.

The dough is made by grinding almonds into a meal and adding it to creamed butter and sugar. It's a fairly simple process although my dough came out fairly wet. I was going to say that I added a little bit more flour to it but actually in all the hecticness I can't remember if I did or not.

I refrigerated the dough as instructed but I could have left it for longer since it was pretty sticky when I got it out to roll out into balls. I pressed on under time restrictions and it wasn't too messy to roll into balls. The flattening was a bit trickier, with the little disks sticking to my hand, the glass I used to flatten them, my finger....etc. I used a bit of water to stop it sticking to the glass but I wouldn't recommend it since some of the biscuits became 'water damaged'.

Happily most of them came out quite well. And I dusted the first few with coffee powder when they came out of the oven as the recipe instructs. I then tased one which did not go well. I thought they were terribly bitter and that I must have done something wrong (sigh). I didn't brush any more with coffee powder and when I tried one the next dayit was lovely. I think the difference was a nights' sleep and no coffee powder on my fingers(!), as well as leaving the coffee powder off the top.

These are lovely biscuits, thin and crispy with a lovely coffee flavour. I had to put them in the freezer but I think they'd be lovely in an Eton Mess type desert with cream and fruit. I look forward to trying it when I'm back from hols.

Happy Christmas to those who celebrate this time of year and best wishes to everyone for the new year.