Party Biscuits
300g plain flour
pinch salt
1tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon (or nutmeg, optional)
100g butter, diced
100g light muscovado sugar (or soft brown sugar)
2 eggs
60g golden syrup
Sieve together the dry ingredients. Rub in the butter then stir in the sugar. With a fork, stir 1 egg into the golden syrup and add to the mixture, beating well. You can do this in a food processor; mixing all but the last two ingredients then posting these together down the chute. If needed add the second egg a teaspoonful at a time. Preheat oven to 160C.
Form dough into a couple of discs and refrigerate one whilst you get started on the first. This dough is quite sticky at first but there’s a good reason for that, in order to get a maximum amount of biscuits it needs to be able to absorb as much flour as possible without becoming too dry. Flour the surface, dough and rolling pin well; it will become less sticky as you roll and re-roll it.
Roll to about 5mm thick; and place on greased floured baking parchment. They take about 12-20 mins to cook, but as they’re golden brown anyway you need to keep an eye on them. They shouldn’t have any feel of uncooked dough about them, but neither should they be rigid. To make glace icing, 300g caster sugar with about 3tbsp boiling water (plus food colouring) should do the trick.
These, as they are harder, will keep for days in an airtight cake tin. You can replace the cinnamon (or nutmeg) with all-spice and make them more ginger-snappy.