Date Drop Cookies

If you’ve never had a drop biscuit, imagine a rock cake, without the rockiness. As these went so well, I decided to try another variation, this time from The Complete Book of Desserts by Anne Seranne (publishers name, 1955) which has recipe for several kinds, including chocolate, almond and molasses (which is definitely on my list). This section of the ‘Small cakes and cookies’ chapter is called ‘Some Old Cooky Jar Favorites’.

Date Drop Cookies

1/2 cup butter [i.e. 4oz]
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups enriched flour
2 teaspoons double acting baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup dates
1/4 cup milk

Blend butter, sugar, egg and vanilla.

Combine flour, baking powder and salt and stir in the sliced dates. Add flour-date mixture alternately with milk to butter mixture.

Drop batter from teaspoon onto baking tray rubbed with shortening and bake at 350 degrees, for 12 – 15 minutes. makes 2 dozen 2-inch cookies.

Notes

• I decided to make the full amount – 24, yikes! The ingredients however made more than 24. Try 30, more like 32, if I hadn’t eaten some of the dough.
• I used slightly less salt as I was using rather salty salted butter.
• It didn’t specify what kind of sugar, so I chose crunchy demarara, as opposed to a soft, dark sugar. I also made a mistake when measuring, adding a 1/2 cup and then a 1/3 cup of sugar, rather than a 1/4.

Results

As you can see, they are a variety of shapes – the ones at the top and back of the oven flattened instantly as the butter melted in the heat, while those in the cooler parts maintained a domed shape whilst cooking more slowly. I decided to brown some more than other to compare flavours and I prefer the slightly crunchier, darker ones. They were rather sweet and in need of a bit of nutmeg or cinnamon but the full flavour and  moisture of the dates seemed a better option than chocolate chips.

My regular taster (not a fan of incredibly sweet things) pronounced them decent and managed to put away 3.

Update (12.10.09) These are still delicious after two weeks in a not-completely air-tight tin. They’re slightly softer and the flavour has improved.

Dated and dropped by Elly

Langue de chat (cat’s tongue biscuits)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a person presented with a bowlful of ridiculous chocolate pudding must be in want of a tiny,  crispy biscuit. And so it was on the 23rd of September, when I cobbled together a chocolate and rum Bavarian cream (I had planned to flavour it with praline but I felt that the custard base alone was incredibly sweet. This was also from Anne Seranne, but won’t be blogged due to rampant deviation from the recipe.)

Notes

• As (at the time of baking) I only had a small-nozzled piping bag, I piped 1 inch long biscuits, that were approximately half the diameter of a pencil. This resulted in biscuits of 1 1/2 inches long and about half an inch wide.

• They needed more than 4 minutes, more like 8, maybe my oven was too cold. (As you can see, some ended up rather better cooked than others.)

Results

Although far from uniform in appearance, I was happy with these, especially the texture.

Gentle reader, be warned. These must be piped and the egg white must be added a little at a time.

Buoyed up by my success on Wednesday, (I say ‘success’,  I served them up to the refined palates of A, A and my sister and they finished them), I decided to have a second go on Saturday, planning to make circular ones and drizzle some chocolate on top. Disaster. This time, the whites of 2 medium eggs was far too much. The biscuits (not piped) were too full of air (and egg – the biscuits should hold their shape once piped) and they bubbled and stuck and were generally stupid. I had to attend an afternoon social function empty-handed – oh, the shame. (Although our charming hostess had rustled up two kinds of cupcakes –    so no one went unsweetened.)

Catted by Elly

Ginger Shortbread

This recipe is from volume 3 of the Good Housekeeping Cooking Compendium (Waverly, 1955), Picture Cake Making from the Small Fancy Cakes section, which also, completely unpredictably, includes macaroons, several variations of  profiteroles and these.

Ginger Shortbread

6oz flour
2 oz castor sugar
½ – 1tsp ground ginger
4oz butter
1oz chopped crystallised ginger

Put dry ingredients into a bowl and rub in fat until mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add chopped ginger, knead mixture until smooth and then pack into a sandwich tin. Crimp edges, mark top into triangles and prick with a fork. Bake in a moderate oven (350 degrees) until golden and firm  – about 1 hour. Do not remove from tin till cool.

Notes

• This recipe uses a very large amount of butter, which started melting as the dough was coming together and made it seem almost pastry-like.
• 1oz didn’t seem to be very much ginger – I chopped it into pieces the size of long rice grains
• After baking, the triangles I had marked had almost vanished, so while it was still warm, I re-scored them with a knife.

Results

Although the worst sin of shortbread is that it is  dry and hard, I can’t help think there might be a little too much butter in this recipe. The shortbread are very creamy-tasting which doesn’t quite blend with the citrus notes in the ginger. Really, however, I’m quibbling. This had an amazing texture and perhaps if I had added a little less ground ginger (I went for the maximum teaspoon), the flavour might have been more mellow. I would make again but add some warmer notes to the flavour – like vanilla extract or dark chocolate chips.

Shorted by Elly

Curry Knots (savoury biscuits)

Although I referred to these disparagingly in another post, I secretly thought they would be quite nice and wanted to eat them. (Another dish for the party, this time from the Good Housekeeping Institute’s Cookery Compendium, Waverly 1955. You can see the desired result here in the bottom right-hand corner.)

Curry Knots

2oz butter or margarine
4oz flour
1tsp curry powder
A pinch of salt
Egg yolk or water to mix

Rub the fat into the flour, add the sieved curry powder and salt and mix well. Bind together with a little egg yolk or water, until a stiff but pliable dough is obtained. , Knead well, to remove any cracks, and roll the mixture into a long strip about 1/4 inch thick. Cut narrow strips about 6 inches long and tie each into a knot, as seen in the picture. Brush over with beaten egg yolk and bake in a moderately hot oven for 10 – 15 minutes, until they are golden brown.

Notes

• I made half as per.
• I have never bought curry powder so chose Schwartz Medium (as the company was formed in 1889), the ingredients on the container were the same as the contents of my spice shelf. I shall have to make some more ‘curry’ recipes now I am equipped.
• The curry powder has a slightly chicken-y taste, which I found slightly odd as I usually make vegetarian Indian food.
• The dough, despite my efforts, was far too dry to form as suggested, I used a flower-shaped cutter to cut them out and then cut them in half again.

Results

The result was savoury, definitely cumin-y pastry. I didn’t mix the curry powder as thoroughly as necessary so some were merely flavoured whilst others were noticeably more pungent. Almost all were eaten by the end of the night which surprised me. Not an unpleasant experience but not one to be repeated.

Not knotted by Elly

Fifteens

Being somewhat lacking in vintage cookbooks around the house and utterly terrified by the selection of vintage recipes online, I decided to revisit on an old family favourite and make Fifteens. No Northern Irish get together was complete without these sweet, sticky and utterly moreish traybakes when I was growing up and I hoped that no one else would have brought dessert to the party…the fact that Fifteens are astoundingly easy to make was merely an added bonus!

Fifteens

15 digestive biscuits
15 glace cherries, chopped
15 large marshmallows, chopped
1 small tin condensed milk
dessicated coconut (if liked)

Crush your digestives, either using a food processor or a rolling pin. Chop your cherries and marshmallows and add to the biscuit crumbs and add the condensed milk gradually, mixing until sticky and hard to stir. You may need less than the whole tin (I used half of the smallest tin I could find in Tesco). Tip out onto a baking tray you have lined with greaseproof paper and shape into a log like shape. At this point I rolled it in the dessicated coconut which I had toasted lightly in the oven to add some texture and garnish, but if you prefer you could leave it au naturel. Refrigerate overnight and then slice as desired before serving.

Results

I hadn’t eaten these in years and was delighted to discover they are as delicious as I remember from childhood. They are like a very sweet cheesecake base with little chewy nuggets of loveliness scattered throughout and are extremely moreish. In fact the plate seemed to empty very quickly making me wish I had made Thirties instead!

[These were indeed very popular – the recipe yielded 18 slices of which all were eaten promptly (only 3 by me). Ed]

Chopped and rolled by Nikky

Macaroons

A generous friend gave me a pack of delicious marzipan to which, this weekend, I felt compelled to do more justice than simply cutting off tiny pieces and eating them and which all but one of my cook books deem suitable only for lagging a cake or dyeing and forming into tiny fruit.

Hurrah, then, for this volume half-inched (well, not really, I asked permission) from the family collection. The Complete Book of Desserts (Ann Seranne, 1952, Faber and Faber for the Cookery Book Club) is just that – 357 pages, divided into 18 chapters including Baked and Steamed Puddings; Gelatin Desserts; Cornstarch, Rice, Farina and Other Creamy Desserts; Dessert Omelets [sic] and Souffles. The recipes assume a reasonable level of cooking ability and are consequently fairly light on detail and some recipes are printed over two pages leading to turning during cooking, never good for the panicked cook. I also like the bright, kitsch slip cover.

Macaroons – Massepain

1 cup almond paste
1 cup confectioners’ sugar
3 – 4 egg whites

Work the almond paste and sugar together until well mixed.

Add egg whites, one at a time, mixing thoroughly after each addition.

It may not be necessary to add any or all of the last egg white.

The consistency of the dough should be soft enough to be easily passed through a pastry bag fitted with a plain round tube, and yet hold its shape on the baking sheet.

Line a baking tray with waxed paper and press out rounds of dough the size of a 25 cent piece.

Bake in a slow oven for 12 – 15 minutes

Notes

• I halved the recipe
• I stirred the egg whites briefly before adding to the marzipan and sugar so it would be easier to combine everything.
• I added just over 1 medium egg white first and that was enough to give the dough was a soft dropping texture.
• I don’t own a piping bag so I spooned out teaspoons of dough.
• They took a little longer than 15 minutes – more like 20.
• I should have left them to cool completely as some of the bottoms broke as they were lifted off the tray.

Conclusion

These were hollow and meringues-like; Light, chewy and perfectly sweet. I suppose a little flour or more thoroughly whisked egg whites would yielded something more like a biscuit and less like a piece of confectionery but I was pleased to have made something so insubstantial and therefore unlike my usual effort when baking.

Update (30.09.09):

In a subsequent attempt to make some macaroons as a present, I encountered several problems. Firstly, I decided to make 1.5 times the recipe, in order to have plenty to dispense (and plenty FOR ME), so I, of course, lightly stirred 5 egg whites.  This turned out, however,  to be excessive, with around 3 whites leading to very wet batter and 2 flat, messy batches. I added a dessertspoon of plain flour and around 25g of ground almonds and a pinch of baking powder and finally produced something acceptable – same meringue-like texture, although this time with many large cracks running over the surface. Some melted dark chocolate painted on the bottom augmented my woe (I burnt the first lot) but eventually completed the gift which was well-received by the main intended recipient (and her other half). After a couple of days, I asked if the altered macaroons had become harder or chewier, they were reported as ‘harder but still awesome’.

Luckily and coincidentally, in the middle of a weekend of carbohydrate mis-adventure, I was informed of the deliciousness of making a biscuit base (including amaretti crumbs) for apple pie, so I have a use for all the pale, misshapen biscuits in my freezer. Of course, I can’t serve this up to any of my loyally reading friends. They’ll know what a cheapskate I am.

Cheese Biscuits

I realise one of my fellow bloggers has had a crack at these before (from another tome, I’m using ‘Cookies and Biscuits’ in  the Good Housekeeping Institute’s Cookery Compendium, Waverly 1955) but I’m going to a picnic tomorrow and anyway, I love them. Such a ominous illustration though! Curry knots and savoury plaits are clearly the snacks of doom. The little ‘boat shaped’ (I’m assuming that’s ’50s cookbook talk for ‘pointy oval’) cheese biscuits appear to be about to fall into the abyss.

Cheese Straws and biscuits

Ingredients

3oz flour
Salt and cayenne pepper
½ an egg yolk
1 ½ oz butter or margarine
2oz grated cheese

Sieve the dry ingredients and rub in the fat very lightly with the fingertips. Add the cheese and mix well.  Beat the yolk with about 1 tablespoon of water and mix into the dry ingredients, to give a stiff dough. Knead lightly, then place on a floured board and roll out into a strip about 4 inches wide. Trim and cut across into “straws”. Cut rings from the trimmings.

Place biscuits on a greased tin and bake in a moderately hot oven until golden brown and firm – about 7 – 10 minutes. When cold place straws through rings, and serve hot or cold.

This cheese pastry is the basis of many savoury biscuits, and can be cut into triangles, boat shapes etc  as seen in the picture.

Notes

• I  followed the recipe exactly including taking the advice of the last paragraph and making some triangular ones and some round ones. (I’m easily amused.)

Conclusion

They worked perfectly –  although I may have overdone it slightly with the cayenne pepper.

Baked by Elly

Notes

· I exactly what it said, except that I took the advice of the last paragraph and made some triangular ones and some round ones. (I’m easily amused.)

Conclusion

They worked perfectly – although I may have overdone it slightly with the cayenne pepper.

Crunchy Date Bars

Dates: I don’t like fresh ones. I don’t like whole ones. I once, however, ate a pudding of tiny deep fried pastries filled with pulped dried dates and chocolate, accompanied by some sort of pale ice cream. This dessert lives with me, it haunts my dreams and one day, I will recreate it. Until then, I shall raid the Good Housekeeping Institute’s Cookery Compendium’s ‘Small Fancy Cakes’ section (Waverley 1955).

Date Crunchies

Ingredients

8oz flour
4oz rolled oats
3oz sugar
5oz margarine
12oz dates
Grated rind of lemon
2 – 3 tbps. Water

Put the flour, oats and sugar into a basin. Melt the margarine, add to the dry ingredients and mix well. Chop the dates, put with the grated lemon rind and the water into a pan and heat until the mixture is of a soft consistency. Spread half the dry mixture over the bottom of a Swiss roll tin, spread with the date mixture, and sprinkle the rest of the dry ingredients on top. Bake in a moderate oven (375 degrees F) for 1 hour. Turn out on a flat board, and when quite cold, cut into fingers or triangles.

• I halved the quantities

• I decided to use Demerara sugar

• The whole thing was obviously not going to stick together. The dry mixture was obviously very dry.  I followed the instructions to the letter and ‘sprinkled’ the topping on, rather than flattening it down into the date layer

• It came out of the oven flaky and pale. If I had tried to turn it out on to a board it would have fallen to bits. I cut a bit out and ate it – it was crumbly and a little bland. I rescued it by melting down some more sugar and butter and because I had gone off-recipe already, some cinnamon. Then I poured this over the top and baked it for another 20 minutes

Conclusion

I speculate that this recipe would work if the sugar and fat were melted together like a flapjack.  The oven was simply not hot enough to completely melt the sugar. My end result was a biscuit-y bottom layer, a chewy middle layer, (very similar to mince) and a crispy topping. Also, they store very well – over 2 weeks.

Dated by Elly

Cinnamon Slices

I am greatly enjoying broadening my baking repertoire through this blog and today is opportunity for another experiment. I genuinely have no idea how these will turn out – firm? Crunchy? Crumbly? (This recipe from the Good Housekeeping Institute’s Cookery Compendium,Waverly, 1955).

Cinnamon Slices

Ingredients

6oz ground almonds
8oz icing sugar
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
A little egg white
1 tsp flour

Sieve the almonds, cinnamon and 6oz sugar into a basin and mix to a fairly stiff paste with egg white. Knead with the hand until smooth, then roll out on a lightly floured board into a long narrow strip, about 1/8 inch in thickness. Make an icing by mixing the remaining sugar and flour and moistening with egg white. Spread this smoothly over the paste with a wetted palette knife, and then cut into fingers. Place on a greased and floured tin and bake in a moderate oven (350 degrees) until light brown in colour and firm and crisp to the touch – about 20 minutes.

• I halved the recipe, as per.
• I needed exactly half the white of a medium egg, although I added it in tiny amounts.
• The batter tasted like marzipan, quel surprise.
• I cut the dough into 20 small biscuits – roughly  1 x 3 cm.
• I baked them for just over 20 minutes.
• All very quick and simple to make.

Results

These are a cross between a meringue, an almond macaroon and those sponge fingers used in tiramisu. (I want to call them boudoir fingers?) They rose a lot when baked when surprised me – they’re at least 3 times as thick. Again, boo to the authors for not specifying how far apart the biscuits should be placed on the tray.  They rose enough to become hollow, with  thin, crisp, top layer and a pleasantly chewy, bottom layer. The amount of cinnamon is perfect, blending with the almond. The icing adds an extra texture rather than a flavour – so when I make these again, I will probably add some lemon zest to it.  This review contains the word ‘crisp’ far too many times but they are crisp and like all crisp things, they are very more-ish.

Sliced by Elly

Custard Creams

Cream-filled biscuits seem to have dropped out of UK baking fashion in favour of American-style cookies, healthy things containing grated apple or dead easy things like flapjack (nice though all those can be).  The Good Housekeeping Institute’s Cookery Compendium (Waverly, 1955), however, is full of biscuits of every kind, from things like this (pretty much) and this to custard creams! I thought custard creams were dreamed up by some marketing person in, well, the past and I was basically right.  They were a late 19^th century invention, probably by Huntley & Palmers of Reading, probably to capitalise on the new popularity of custard powder. (More info here.)

They’re still the most popular biscuit in the UK and in one of her recent publications, a certain camera-friendly Brunette cook gave a recipe for heart-shaped ones saying the it was “hitherto… only known in its packet form”. Ha! GHI got there first, missus, and armed with a 7p packet of economy custard powder, a teeny bar of Green and Blacks and some coffee essence, I shall recreate this national favourite in my own kitchen.

Custard Creams

4 oz margarine
4 oz sugar
1 egg yolk
4 oz custard powder
4 oz flour
Vanilla essence
A little milk
Butter icing

Cream the fat and sugar and beat in the egg yolk. Add the custard powder, flour and a few drops of vanilla essence and sufficient cold milk to give a dough.  Roll out thinly, prick all over and cut into squares, fingers or rounds. Bake on a greased tin in a moderate oven (375C) for about 15 minutes until very lightly coloured. Cool on a wire tray.

When the biscuits are quite cold, sandwich them together in pairs with butter icing, either plain or flavoured with coffee essence or chocolate. Serve with sieved icing sugar dredged over the top.

Chocolate Butter Icing

2 oz butter or margarine
3 oz icing sugar
A little vanilla essence
1 oz block [sic] chocolate

Cream the fat, then add the sieved sugar a little at a time, and blend together. Add a few drops of vanilla essence, and lastly mix in the melted chocolate.

Coffee Butter Icing

Use the above recipe [Vanilla buttercream: 3 oz butter or margarine, 4oz icing sugar, vanilla essence, colouring, if required], beating in coffee essence to taste.

Notes

• I halved the recipe.
• I used margarine in the biscuits and butter in the icing.
• As with the golf biscuits (and again, probably because of the margarine), it didn’t need any milk. I mixed it into perfect dough, felt like I might be cheating as I hadn’t added any milk, added a teaspoon and regretted it when it instantly became too sticky and needed lots of flour when rolling out. Maybe this is a difference between margarine at the time of writing and today? Margaret Thatcher worked out how to get more air into icecream when she was a scientist. Perhaps there is more water in marg these days? Anyway, in the future if I am instructed to ‘add sufficient milk to give a dough’ and sufficient milk is no milk at all, I shall add none.
• Again this recipe doesn’t say how widely spaced the biscuits should be on the tray, nor how many this dough should produce – not good for learners, GHI!

Results

The uncooked dough smelt and tasted exactly like shop-bought custard cream biscuit. (What!? Uncooked dough sampling is an important part of trying a new recipe.) The batch I made produced 18 biscuits, 2 – 3 inches across. I don’t own a plain round cutter and the crimped edges spread messily. (As the dough was quite soft, I didn’t want to risk using an empty jar to cut them out.) I made 2 small batches of buttercream icing – one chocolate, one coffee. I didn’t ice all the biscuits, but kept some plain stored in an airtight tin and the icing in the fridge, so they could be iced as necessary to avoid going soggy. Both stayed fresh for a week.

After baking however they were quite different to the commercial version. The vanilla flavour is quite pronounced (of course) and the texture was unlike any biscuit I’ve made before – both light and slightly chewy.  (I imagine the lightness is caused by lower gluten content.) This wasn’t what I expected – I expected something like shortcake. They went from chewy to positively bendy 6 hours after baking. (Really, I could bend them,  I can’t believe I didn’t take a photo of this.) By the following day, they had crisped up completely and the icing was a good contrast to this.

They were as rich and sweet as you would imagine, I think with vanilla buttercream they would have been inedible – I liked the coffee and chocolate iced versions equally. If I made them again, I would add some spice to the dough and some booze to the icing. This biscuit reminded me most of all why I bake at home – there is simply nothing like this that one could buy.