This one is a bit of a blast from the past! When I was a girl, really before I was maybe 10 or 11 (yes, I do have a good memory!), I remember that Mum used to occasionally make biscuits or what she called ‘tablet’. As those in the know might guess, Mum was Scottish, and Scottish Tablet is like a hard fudge, very, very sweet. Her biscuits were like a shortbread, sandwiched together with jam and topped with glace icing. So, when I came across a recipe for what they called ‘Empire Biscuits’, these looked just like my Mum’s so I thought I’d have a go, for nostalgia if nothing else!
I don’t often have a go at biscuits-somehow, I don’t seem to have the knack and my shortbreads never seem to come out very good. It would remain to be seen if this recipe would work!
Biscuits
| 250 g/ 9oz butter, at room temperature* |
| 100 g/ 3½ oz granulated sugar** |
| 1 egg |
| ½ tsp vanilla extract |
| 450 g / 1 lb all-purpose (plain) flour, plus extra to dust surfaces |
*I used unsalted butter.
**use caster sugar if in UK
Glace Icing and Filling
| 250 g/9 oz icing sugar (powdered/confectioners) |
| 3 tbsp milk, cream or water |
| Raspberry jam |
| Glace cherries, halved, or other decoration |
Line a suitable number of baking trays/cookie trays with baking parchment, set aside.
Cream together the butter and sugar until smooth and light.
Add the egg and vanilla and mix in.
Add the flour, in batches. Mixing between each addition.
Turn dough out onto a lightly-floured board. It was quite a dry mix but it came together usingthe hands and the rolling pin.
Use a floured rolling pin to roll out to about 1 cm/¼ inch thickness. Cut out suitably-sized biscuits using a cookie cutter or the edge of a glass or cup. I don’t have any cookie cutters so I used the lip of a glass, about 3¼ inch diameter. Transfer to the prepared cookie sheets. Reform and re-roll the dough to cut out more biscuits, making sure that there are even numbers. Place on the cookie sheets with about ½ inch between each biscuit to allow for spreading during baking.
Transfer the cookie trays to the refrigerator to chill for about 1 hour.
Preheat the oven to 350˚F/ 325 ˚F convection/180˚C/160˚C fan/Gas 4
Place the cookie trays in the preheated oven for 10-15 minutes, until baked through but not browned. Remove from the oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
Mix the icing sugar and the milk/cream/water to make a smooth icing.
When completely cool, spread half of the biscuits with raspberry jam. Top these with the unspread biscuits.
Top the double biscuits with glace icing and half a glace cherry, or other suitable decoration.
I ended up with 11 biscuits but you could have more or less, depending on the size of the circles cut out.
So, they are not bad. They are not exactly what I remember from my childhood, but it was nice to reminisce a little. They are pretty filling, too, but go pretty well with a nice cup of tea.
The Pudding Queen 