It’s a while since I’ve posted a recipe here, so as I was doing a bit of experimental baking this morning to create some biscuits to take to Otakuu’s Christmas do, I documented the process:
Ingredients
115g butter
115g brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla essence
150g flour
slightly less than 2 tsp baking powder*
75g berry-flavoured Light ‘n’ Tasty cereal**
115g dark chocolate
115g white chocolate
* I replaced self-raising flour in the original recipe with plain flour + baking powder, because I always think self-raising flour leaves a funny taste. By my calculation the exact substitution should be 1 7/8 tsp baking powder, so if you really want, you can measure out 7 x 1/8 teaspoons, or just do it the easy way and make your second teaspoonful slightly short.
** The original recipe called for porridge oats, but not having any on hand, I substituted some of MrPloppy’s cereal stash (don’t tell him ;-)), which had the bonus of having lots of chewy fruity bits. You could substitute pretty much any muesli-type cereal depending on the taste you wanted. Step 1: Soften butter (or over-soften in my case, because I always soften butter by putting the bowl in a sink full of hot water, and I forgot that since the electrician replaced the thermostat on the hot water cylinder, the hot water has been a lot hotter than it used to be) and cream together with brown sugar until light and fluffy. Step 2: Add egg and vanilla essence (insert standard rant here about using proper essence and not the fake “vanilla flavouring” because it tastes rubbish) and beat well. Step 3: Add sifted flour and baking powder, and mix (yeah, theoretically it should be gently folded in, but realistically, you’re making biscuits, not a sponge cake – electric beaters on slightly slower speed is fine). Step 4: Add roughly chopped chocolate (important note: don’t do what I did and wonder if you could save some effort chopping up all that chocolate by using the nut grinding attachment on your food processor. “Grind” means exactly that, so you end up with powdered white chocolate before you realise what’s happening and switch it off. And powdered white chocolate, while it sounds like a nice concept, in baking terms acts like an extra measure of sugar, so the biscuits come out much crunchier than they should have) and cereal, and mix in (this bit *is* better done with a spoon, because a mixer would crush the cereal too much). PS. If you’re wondering about the pink flakes in the white chocolate, that’s because I didn’t have enough white chocolate chips, so I threw in a few squares of Whittaker’s Raspberry White Chocolate to make up the weight. I wouldn’t advise doing this though, because Whittaker’s Raspberry White Chocolate is the food of the gods, and should never be wasted on mere baking! All mixed together and ready for the final stage. Step 5: Spoon out onto lined (or greased, if you are really into hard work and like cleaning oven trays. I don’t, which is why baking paper was invented) trays, leaving plenty of space for spreading. Heaped teaspoonfuls is about right. Bake at 180 C for 15 minutes. Yeah, you know what I said about leaving plenty of room for spreading? Though mine did spread a bit more than they should because of the powdered chocolate acting like sugar thing. Mine are also a bit crunchier round the edges than they should be too. But the final verdict from the official taste tester MrPloppy was that they tasted “ok for home made biscuits”, which is high praise for him! (He even forgave me for commandeering his Light ‘n’ Tasty)
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One Comment
Those look and sound very good to me for ANY kind of biscuits!!!
Those look and sound very good to me for ANY kind of biscuits!!!