Okay, for my US friends, our biscuits are your cookies so this is a cross between a sweet lemon cakelet and a ‘cookie’. Ta dah….:
The outside is lovely and crisp, but despite being so thin, the inside remains just a tiny bit soft and chewy:
Before I write up the recipe I should explain that this started out as a kind of lemon tart cake that went very wrong. Cakes are not my forte, but I suspect the original recipe was at fault as it called for a tart base made from self-raising flour. Into this uncooked tart base went a very nice, cooked lemon filling and the whole lot was supposed to bake in the oven until it turned into a tart.
I don’t have a picture, but my lovely lemon tart turned into something resembling a soufle. It overflowed the baking dish like Vesuvius and made a sweet-smelling mess of my oven. What little I could salvage tasted like lemon toffee cake. I was not happy.
To cut a long story short, I had just enough unsalted butter left over to try the cake part of the recipe as a biscuit, and at last something worked! Here it is.
Ingredients
60 gm unsalted butter
1 cup self-raising flour
1/2 cup caster sugar
the rind of one lemon, finely grated
1 whole egg
Method
Pre-heat the oven to 160 C [if using fan-bake] or 180 C if just using the ordinary oven setting [this is a moderate oven].
Line baking trays with baking paper. [You will need more than one tray as the biscuit mix spreads out quite a lot as it bakes so the biscuits have to be spaced fairly wide apart].
Toss the flour, sugar and grated lemon rind together [to spread the lemon flavour evenly]. Add the butter and cut it into small chunks with a knife, mixing into the flour as you go. Once the chunks are small enough, rub the flour mix and butter between your fingers until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs.
Lightly beat the egg and add it to the butter mix until you get a fairly smooth ‘paste’.
Spoon heaped teaspoons of the paste onto the trays, leaving at least 2 inches between each one, and place in the oven. Baking time is approx. 10 minutes or until the biscuits are firm in the middle and slightly golden around the edges. Allow to cool on the tray if you can wait that long…-rolls eyes-…we didn’t.
The quantity given should make approximately 24 biscuits which sounds like quite a lot, but they are very moorish. If anyone manages to keep some for more than a few minutes I’d love to know how long they last. 🙂
Happy Sunday,
Meeks
June 14th, 2016 at 10:12 pm
Oh, yum! I love the way you didn’t just see the disaster, but the delicious biscuit inside it. I’ll have to try these sometime. I’ll probably toss in some poppy seeds, though. 🙂
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June 15th, 2016 at 9:39 am
Mmm…poppy seeds would be…delicious. 😀
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June 14th, 2016 at 7:48 am
I LOVE this recipe. But I would because it is basically the same as my crispy lemon cookie recipe! LOL…
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June 14th, 2016 at 10:00 am
Oh! Is there a difference between the two? Can you share? lol
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June 13th, 2016 at 3:27 am
I’m going to try these some day. 🙂
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June 13th, 2016 at 9:08 am
I haven’t tried them with spelt but I can’t see why they wouldn’t work. If you try them with spelt could you let me know how they turn out?
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June 13th, 2016 at 9:10 am
Will do. I think it ought to be fine. They will just look less yellow because the flour isn’t white.
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June 13th, 2016 at 9:12 am
Actually, I’m not sure why mine turned out so yellow. I did use freerange eggs so maybe that was part of the reason.
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June 13th, 2016 at 9:17 am
Possibly, as the yolks will be darker. I use those, too. In any case I’m sure they’ll be delicious. 🙂
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June 13th, 2016 at 9:35 am
🙂
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June 12th, 2016 at 11:41 pm
Love it! Just the sort of straightforward type of food I’m into these days 🙂
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June 12th, 2016 at 11:54 pm
Like the £250 per head buffet at Sotheby’s? 😛
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June 13th, 2016 at 12:01 am
Number 1: it was not a buffet. Number 2, I didn’t go. Number 3, yes, actually. Dabbous is known for really straightforward food 😛
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June 13th, 2016 at 9:10 am
Me too. I’ll still go nuts for a special occasion but life is for living, especially if you’re the cook!
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