I’m mainly recording this for the biscuits, which are light and crumbly and would make a nice base for other desserts. The dough must either be left in the fridge for several hours or put in the freezer for a couple of hours once made, because it’s too sticky to work with otherwise.
180g flour
2 tsp baking powder
3 egg yolks
140 g salted butter, at room temperature
100 g sugar
zest of 1 lemon, finely grated, or a few drops of vanilla essence
Topping:
Strawberries
Whipped cream (with a little crème fraiche folded in if you like)
Icing sugar
Beat the egg yolks with the sugar until pale and thick. Add the lemon zest or vanilla. In a separate bowl, rub together flour, butter and baking powder as if you were making pastry. Then add the egg mixture to the flour mixture and stir together with a spatula, adding a little bit more flour if it’s really sticky. Divide it into two and roll each half into a sausage shape about 3-4 cm across. Wrap tightly in cling film and put in either the fridge or the freezer to firm up, depending on how much time you have.
Preheat the oven to 180C. Slice the rolls into pieces about 1 cm thick and put on a greased baking tray. Space well apart, so they don’t all spread out and bump into each other like mine did! Bake for 10-15 minutes until a nice golden brown. Remove from the oven and cool on a rack — they will get crisp as they cool.
Top with strawberries and whipped cream and dust with icing sugar.
Biscuits in the states aren’t cookies but more like scones. The yellow kind I was talking about is a sponge cake.
Thank you Peabody! These bases aren’t sponge cakes, they are more like cookies — just to confuse the issue further 🙂
These sound great!