We don’t really buy biscuits. In fact, I can’t remember the last time we did. In no way am I averse to biscuits. In fact, a chocolate Hobnob or any in the range of Digestives is most welcome with my cup of tea. Nevertheless, biscuits are just not items that grace our shopping baskets.
If we fancy some biscuits, I generally knock up a batch of ginger nuts from a 1990s Cranks recipe. They are generous, crunchy-on-the-outside-chewy-on-the-inside cookies and are a particular favourite of the delectable Mr M. However, a bit of variety is always good, and I have been looking for a good alternative recipe for a while.
I tried making this lemon biscuit recipe from JamieOliver.com, but Jamie Oliver recipes and I frequently do not get along. This was no exception. I tried them twice and they looked appetising enough – they are in fact shown in my profile picture – but the texture and taste were awful. I thought it was me. After all, despite being able to bake decent cakes and scones, I have my troubles with bread and pastry. I took heart, however, from my ginger nut expertise and persevered.
I decided one day to make cupcakes but thought I’d have a look around the internet for inspiration beforehand. I spend quite a lot of time looking online at the myriad recipes of something I want to try and descriptions of techniques about which I want to learn; I suppose it’s my version of reading cookery books. In the middle of the list of seemingly endless cupcake variations popped up a recipe for jammy dodgers.
The branded biscuits, Jammie Dodgers, made by Burton’s Foods, hold much nostalgia for children of the 1980s. They comprise two plain cookies, the top one of which has a heart-shaped hole that reveals the red jam sandwiching them together. Simple but scrumptious! Somehow I had never thought of making these biscuits at home, but it suddenly dawned on me that they should be pretty simple.
They were, and there was something deeply satisfying about the resultant pile on the cooling rack, with jewel-like red jam peeking out.
I’ve made them twice now, once with plain biscuits and raspberry jam and once with lemon biscuits and lemon curd. The biscuit is light and crisp and keeps quite well in an airtight tin. I’m thinking now of trying a lime version with lime curd so that I can have traffic-light biscuits (I’m easily amused).
The recipe for the plain biscuits is below. If you want make a lemon version, just add the zest and juice of a lemon. You might need to adjust the amounts of sugar and flour slightly to compensate for the extra liquid, but that didn’t seem to be a problem when I made them. A 7.5 cm/3 in cookie cutter will produce good-sized biscuits and, if you don’t have an extensive cutter collection, a screw cap from a wine bottle works well for the hole in the middle. Don’t forget to re-roll the cut outs for even more biscuits!
Jammy dodgers
Makes 12
145 g softened butter or margarine
70 g caster sugar
1 large egg beaten
Few drops vanilla extract
230 g plain flour
35 g corn flour
½ tsp baking powder
Pinch of salt
100 g seedless raspberry jam
Preheat the oven to 180ºC/350ºF/gas mark 4. Cream the butter or margarine and sugar then gradually beat in the egg and vanilla extract. Sift in the flour, corn flour, baking powder and salt and blend with a wooden (not metal) spoon until everything comes together in a ball of soft dough.
Roll out the half the dough to around 3 mm thick (this is quite thin, but the cookies will rise slightly during baking) and use a cookie cutter of the desired size to cut out an even number of biscuits, re-rolling the scraps until all the dough is used; these will form the bases. Roll out the other half of the dough until the same number of cookies is cut. From this second batch cut out small shapes in the centre (eg, circles or hearts); these will form the tops of the biscuits. Place all the biscuits on baking trays and bake for 15 min until lightly browned.
Cool the biscuits on a rack. Spread a small amount of jam on each base and cover with the top halves. Keep in an airtight container for 4-5 days.
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