If, for some unknown reason, you have ever wondered what I get up to on Sundays when the evenings are dark and the thought of cleaning the flat makes me want to heave, it’s this. This is what I do. I spend my time wondering how I can have biscuits in my life without having to make a batch to feed a small army that I will, inevitably, eat myself.
Luckily a recipe that calls for just enough ingredients to make eight perfectly acceptable sized biscuits means I never have to waste another Sunday evening wondering ever again. And now, neither do you.
My quest for a small-batch biscuit recipe came from a place of frustration because a lot of cookie recipes will call for an egg, which then means you have to have a sufficient amount of dry ingredients to emulsify with it – and therein lie the serving usually being something ridiculous like… 1,600 biscuits.
Have you ever seen that in cookbooks or online?
A biscuit recipe that yields more biscuits than any one household needs and it’s always for a damn bake sale, isn’t it? The recipe is always like ‘oh this recipe is perfect for when your children spring a last minute bake sale on you’.
This has never happened to anyone… ever. I have never in my life sprung a surprise bake sale on my mother and I have never had a surprise bake sale sprung on me.
But we also shouldn’t fathom a world without biscuits, so here are my short-batch almond and white chocolate laced that taste like soft, crunchy marzipan bites.
Consider this an idea only.
You have a thousand different directions you can go with this recipe – you could just use 45g of caster sugar instead of a mix of two sugars, you could add small chunks of milk chocolate, cherries or bashed up Smarties to the dough instead of the almonds… however which way you choose to stud your biscuit, you will not fail.
Speaking of which… may I just share the below with you?
I took this picture on a hot day in June 2020. I was 20 years old and food writing a mere twinkle in my eye. I hated cooking – couldn’t do it, thought it was a waste of time.
The picture above? The result of me trying to bake 6 biscuits for my then boyfriend. Clearly both the biscuits, and I, said fuck it.
So if you ever think you can’t bake or shouldn’t bake because you don’t know what you’re doing, I promise you, you can. Below is a very delicious and very life friendly biscuit recipe, so that you should never have to look at a roasting tray like the one above in your own kitchen.
20 year old Mikey walked so that you could run. Please grab your wooden spoon and run like the wind.
Don’t let his mistake be in vain.
Serves 8 people 1 cookie each or to be honest, 1 person 8 cookies…
60g soft unsalted butter
30g caster sugar
15g soft brown sugar
½ tsp vanilla extract
½ tsp almond extract
100g white chocolate
A small handful of whole skin-on almonds
85g plain flour
¼ tsp sea salt flakes
- In a medium-sized bowl, beat together the butter and sugars until they are thoroughly combined and you can’t see any streaks of butter.
- Add the vanilla and almond extract and beat into the butter and sugar mix.
- Put the white chocolate on a chopping board and using a sharp knife, cut into tiny small-fingernail sized pieces. This is my favourite part, I love cutting chocolate with a knife. Something about the crunch.
- Put the almonds on the board next to the chocolate and with the same knife, cut into a mixture of small-ish chunks and dust.
- Add the chocolate, nuts, flour and salt to the bowl of butter and sugar and stir until you can’t see any specks of flour in the mix.
- Place a small sheet of cling film on your countertop and spoon the dough into the middle of it. It may look like one big dough dollop but don’t worry. Fold the cling film over the dough and twist the ends tightly so that it creates a tight parcel around the dough.
- Now roll it gently on the countertop to shape it as best as you can into a small log, roughly four inches long but don’t get a ruler or anything.
- Pop this in the fridge for roughly 2 – 3 hours, but I just leave it in there overnight. The fridge bit is a crucial step as the cooling time will make the dough very cold, which means the biscuits will retain their crunch as they bake and they won’t spread uncontrollably on the baking tray.
- When you’re ready to bake, reheat your oven to 180C.
- Once your oven is ready, place a strip of baking paper on a baking sheet and take the dough out of the freezer.
- Roll it once more on the countertop – still in its cling film – just to help round out the shape a little from where it’s been flattened a little on one side from lying in the fridge, and then remove the cling film.
- With a knife, slice the dough into eight disks and place on the baking sheet and slip in the oven for 15 minutes.
- Once the time is up, remove from the oven and allow them to cool on the sheet for 10 minutes or so before lifting and devouring.
MIKEY AND THE KITCHEN. 