We've been in the country for 3 weeks now. The last week has been so cold, we've been walking in hats and scarves and coming back to sit by the fire with hot cups of tea. I thought we needed a little something extra to accompany our tea, something warming, sweet and tasty so I raided the larder and the spice cupboard. I found a little tub of saffron that my parents had brought back from India 5 years ago. I thought it was definitely time for it to have an outing so I made a batch of spiced saffron biscuits.
I'm really not a baker, cooking is much more my thing. I don't like feeling restricted to recipes and measurements. Tildy is a particularly good baker though so she guided me through this, with a little help from our Ma too! And I suppose, in our house anyway, we're all embracing new things during this lockdown, so I rose to the the challenge and they seemed to go down a treat. Hopefully I'll come out the other side a professional! Or maybe I'll stick to cooking! We'll see...
I hope you enjoy them!
Poppy x
Spiced Saffron Biscuits
Large pinch of saffron, and a little extra for decorating
1 tbsp boiling water
100g butter
80g golden caster sugar
20g dark brown sugar
1 egg yolk
160g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
3tsp ground ginger
2tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
Icing sugar
Preheat the oven to 170 degrees celsius. Prepare your baking trays with baking paper. Then in a cup, add the saffron and the boiling water and set a side to melt the delicious colour and flavours out. In a large mixing bowl, with an electric whisk, mix together the butter, sugar and saffron water (including the threads) until it becomes creamy. Then beat in the egg yolk. Sift in the flower and mix together with a spoon or a knife until it starts to form a dough. Then begin the knead with the heal of your hand. If the dough is too wet and sticky just add in a little extra flour until the dough feels soft and workable. Tilds says it's best to put it into the fridge for half an hour or so at this point because it hardens and is easier to use with the cutter but we just went straight to the next stage and it worked out okay! So sprinkle a little flour on a clean surface and roll out to about 1cm thick. Then cut your shapes. I used a little cut glass bud vase to make decorative marks and it looked quite pretty. Keep using the dough until it's all been cut into biscuits and place onto a baking tray. Then pop them into bake for 10 mins or until dark golden brown. Once baked, leave to cool, you can either keep them as they are or ice them with a little icing sugar and a few threads of saffron for decoration. Both equally as pretty as each other!