In last year's Great British Bake-off, one of the informational clips between the bakes was about a particular type of biscuits - from Aberffraw in Wales.
What I found particularly intriguing was that the biscuits were shaped on the shell of a scallop. And so I set out to look for a scallop shell. This is not easy to find. But luckily we went to Swanage a few weeks ago and in one of the touristy junk shops, there was a whole bucket of them.
Then the recipe - I used this one, which came out quite high up in a google search,. Once I got started, it struck me that it didn't even have vanilla in it, but I decided to persevere and follow the original recipe before beginning experimentation.
Another great thing was the amounts - the dough I ended up with was about the size of an orange, so perfect for me and Lundulph. I ended up with 10 fairly large biscuits (and a baby one), as they spread a little during baking and I used the 78 mm round cutter. I'll use the smaller one next time, which is 68 mm. Yes, the odd sizes are due to being conversions from imperial measurements.
It was also really quick to make, even when I took the time to first scrape the butter to speed up bringing it to room temperature and then creaming it with the sugar. But the shape did get lost during the baking, so next time I'll try resting the biscuits in the fridge for half an hour, hopefully it'll help.
Update January 2019: Sadly it seems the recipe has been removed and I don't have a copy of it. In fact, I have a feeling I don't have a copy of any of the recipes I've just referred to, so it looks like something to put on my to-do list for this year, to go through all my old posts and check that the links are still valid and update the posts where I can, if the links have been removed.
3 comments:
The link for recipe does not open, could you please let me have it. I tried these in Wales and they were lovely
Oh dear, I'm so sorry about that, I didn't realise that the recipe I used has now been removed and unfortunately I don't have a copy of it either. I'll update the post and remove the link.
you can have my granny's recipe:
Set oven to gas 4.
Cut 4oz butter and cream it using a wooden spoon into 2oz sugar. Slowly add 6oz SR until it comes together. Sprinkle flour on your worktop and roll dough out to between quarter and half inch thick, cut with your clean shell. Re-roll the dough and cut with your shell so you don't waste the scrap but try not to re-roll your dough too many times. Bake for 15(ish) minutes until golden. Put on rack and sprinkle with sugar while hot.
Should make 16ish
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