Chewy crumbly biscuits

I've been meaning to bake for a long time, and today I got a chance. I'd planned to make these ages ago, along with other things. Unfortunately I started with what seemed to be apple turnovers, which turned out to be a mistake. Not directly horrible to eat, just didn't work very well. Lundulph thought they were like a McDonalds apple pie, but baked in the oven instead of deep fried. We still have a copious amount in the freezer and Lundulph is kind enough to eat one every now and then.

Anyway, these turned out very good - just like I like them - crumbly, yet chewy. I guess the dough is a bit like cookie dough. I just didn't make them ridiculously large and didn't put any bits in them.

I had one to try them out (amazing how long it took for them to cool down) and the second one just sneaked up on me and made me eat it. I swear!

Ingredients

200 g unsalted butter or margarine
2 dl caster sugar
1.5 tbsp vanilla sugar or 1.5 tsp vanilla essence
2 tbsp golden syrup
2 tsp baking powder
5 dl plain flour

Method

1. Melt the butter gently. Mix the baking powder into the flour. Preheat the oven, if it is electrical.
   
2. Whisk the butter, sugar and vanilla light and fluffy.
3. Add the syrup and flour and mix until a greasy dough forms. Note it will be a bit crumbly.
4. If the dough feels too loose, put in the fridge for 30 minutes or so.
5. If you can roll it, divide it into 4 - 5 pieces and roll lengths of about 2.5 cm diameter. If not, form small balls of about 3.5 cm diameter. Flatten the lengths with your fingers. Flatten the small balls with a fork.
   
6. Cover some baking sheets with baking paper and place the lengths or balls on them.
7. Bake in the oven at 200 degrees for 15 minutes.
8. If you did lengths, immediately cut diagonally. The biscuits will still be quite soft, so be careful. Leave to cool completely before removing from the baking paper.

The above quantity resulted in 52 biscuits. Now 50... Doubt they'll last very long.

Update 15 July 2007: We (Lundulph mainly) finished these a couple of days ago. Apparently they are good dippers, he says. After the lovely chewiness when still warm, they went a bit too hard for my liking and I suspect it was the butter that did it, so I'll try another batch with margarine and see if that makes things a bit softer. A further thing to do is perhaps increase the amount of baking powder.