Ingredients
- 1 block of butter (250g)
- 128g Golden caster sugar
- 383g plain flour
- Makes around 47 biscuits at 16g each.
Method
Switch the oven on. Turn it up to 180°C.
Chop the butter up into small squares and place into a metal bowl, put this in the warming oven to melt it a bit. I wait until the butter is liquid but you can just wait until it is soft if you are going to cream them together.
Once the butter is soft or liquid, add the sugar and cream together, or just mix well.
Then add the flour and mix thoroughly but try not to knead too much. YOu don’t want to develop gluten.
If you want to add lemon/orange zest or chocolate chips or another flavour now is the time to do it.
I like each of my biscuits to be the same size so I weigh them. It might be a bit anal but I don’t want too much variation in size. Mine are 16g each. But you can choose any weight you like. 20g are a good size and you’ll get 38 biscuits. If you want to be extra clever you could weigh your dough and divide it by a number that will leave you with equal size biscuits. If you don’t do this you will usually end up with a little bit of dough left over which will make you one odd sized biscuit at the end – the bakers treat.
I place each weighed biscuit in my hand and roll it around, then squash it with the other hand to make it even and round, place it on the lined baking tray. My baking tray is quite large because I bake these in the top of my bread oven so I can usually get 49 biscuits per bake. Once all the biscuits are weighed I sprinkle sugar on the tops for extra crunch. You can try other toppings. I sometimes press an almond into the top so at least there is some nutrition in this otherwise snack.
Now place in the oven for 14 minutes. My oven has hot spots so I have to turn my tray around halfway through. I like mine done so they have a very light brown colour around the edges. They do not have to look brown all over to be thoroughly cooked. Pale biscuits still come out crispy if cooked thoroughly and left to cool properly. Word of warning, if the biscuits get too dark, they can taste quite burnt, even though they don’t look it.
Place on cooling racks until they are cool and store in an airtight container. Or you can freeze them.
Tips and Tricks
Make dough today. Bake biscuits tomorrow. Make up a batch of dough in advance, and roll it up into a sausage, the circumference of a single biscuit, and wrap in cling film and keep in the fridge. Then, when I really want some biscuits without the preamble, I can just chop up the sausage into single biscuits, bake and enjoy. Takes much less time.
Freeze the biscuits. Or the dough.