SuperPig and the Shrewsbury Biscuits
I had a pretty good day today - I had a half day holiday, my car passed its MOT (was there ever any doubt? I love my car, it's so choice) and I managed to find out the title of a book by Willie Rushton that I borrowed from a library about twenty-five years ago when I was a mere child. I have since based my life on his teachings and I've been wanting to buy it and re-read it for ages, but I couldn't remember the name - until I found it today! It's called "SuperPig: A Gentleman's Guide to Everyday Survival" and I have it on order from a second-hand bookshop in Norfolk (courtesy of ABE). I'm very VERY excited!!!
Biscuits! I have some good news and some bad news. Actually they're both the same news - the biscuits came out *REALLY* nice. Which is good because I get to eat them, but bad because Pam (who, I'm sorry to say, has a slight tendency to crow - it's such unsightly behaviour in a lady) will be insufferable. Or rather more so than usual.
So - onto the Pam Spam biscuits!
They're not really made of spam of course - they are principally made of fat, sugar and flour. They are not healthy biscuits, despite Pam's assurances. Healthy biscuits have less butter and more spinach. Here are the ingredients:
125g butter (that is HALF A BLOCK OF BUTTER - make sure it's room temperature if you plan to make this without a machine)
150g caster sugar
2 egg yolks (as in sans whites)
225g plain flour
finely grated rind of one lemon (or orange)
50g mixed fruit
Pam says the mixed fruit is optional. It is not. This is why my biscuits came out nicely - it is all down to my decision not to omit the mixed fruit.
There is also an extra secret ingredient that I added, albeit unwillingly. More on that later.
Here's a picture of the ingredients! Your actual ingredients may look slightly different, depending on where you buy them from. Note that THEY ARE ALL FRESH. Bought today. Never been opened. This was my idea and my idea alone, and it is the other reason why the biscuits worked.
The first step is to cream the sugar and butter together. Do you remember me saying that you should get the butter up to room temperature? I didn't actually do this. This is how I discovered that creaming half a block of butter straight from the fridge requires the forearms of Geoff Capes - it is a Herculean task. It almost killed me!
Still, one eternity later (with a few pauses to catch my breath and let the blood back into my cramped-up arm) I'd finally whipped the butter and sugar into the required "pale and fluffy" consistency. Time for some beer to help me recover.
Now add the egg yolk and beat well. I'd accidentally started adding flour at this point before I remembered the egg - not to worry, seemed alright. I was getting a bit buttery as well and I didn't want to grease up the camera - so no pictures. You'll just have to take my word for it.
After the egg you stir in the flour and fruit rind. Or you would, if you hadn't forgotten to grate the lemon. Have you ever grated a lemon? It is far more fiddly and dangerous work than people let on. One lesson I learnt today is that a grater capable of grating lemon rind will make short work of the knuckle on your thumb. IT HURT. I was in agony! I did take a picture of the injury but I didn't want to put people off. I suspect the lemon in the wound didn't help matters.
The lesson here is do not drink and grate lemons. And be careful with graters!
So that was the extra ingredient - my own flesh, finely grated and mixed in with the lemon. I'm not saying it made a noticeable difference to the end product, but if you like your biscuits with a bit of meat in them then it might be for you. Personally I think on the whole it's best left out if you can manage it.
OK - so after the egg and the grated rind etc. you add in the flour. It starts getting even more messy at this point. Once they're roughly folded in you get your hands in there (hand in my case) and mix it all up with the super-vital ingredient, the mixed fruit.
It fairly quickly turns into classic biscuit dough (or cookie dough if you're American). This is what you should be aiming for:
Next you should "put the dough on a lightly floured surface and knead lightly, then roll out to 5mm thickness and cut into 6cm rounds". Why do recipes always assume you have a rolling pin? I flattened it out by hand, which I figured would probably cover the light kneading requirement at the same time, and I used a glass to cut the circles. The glass was my idea and far superior to Pam's suggestion of using a cup, which was rubbish - the glass idea is also the other reason why these biscuits came out well.
This is the flattened dough before I went to work with the glass:
This recipe makes like two tons of dough. You might need to cut down on the measurements a little bit. Considering how hard it is to accurately divide an egg yolk (they're terribly difficult to cut evenly unless they've been boiled first) I would suggest just halving the ingredients if you want less dough.
Here are the biscuits in the oven at 180° - they stay in there for 15 minutes:
And here's the finished product:
It pains me to say this but they're *really* nice. Sugary and lemony. They were going to be saved until after tea but I'd inhaled three of them before I could clear the sides and put the rice on.
So, my first biscuit success. I claim all the credit for this, it was all my own work and it was my quick thinking and skill regarding mixed fruit that was principally responsible for the culinary miracle that took place here today. However, I don't want to sound churlish, so thank you for the recipe Pam. Although everyone knows it was all down to my greatness really.
Biscuits! I have some good news and some bad news. Actually they're both the same news - the biscuits came out *REALLY* nice. Which is good because I get to eat them, but bad because Pam (who, I'm sorry to say, has a slight tendency to crow - it's such unsightly behaviour in a lady) will be insufferable. Or rather more so than usual.
So - onto the Pam Spam biscuits!
They're not really made of spam of course - they are principally made of fat, sugar and flour. They are not healthy biscuits, despite Pam's assurances. Healthy biscuits have less butter and more spinach. Here are the ingredients:
125g butter (that is HALF A BLOCK OF BUTTER - make sure it's room temperature if you plan to make this without a machine)
150g caster sugar
2 egg yolks (as in sans whites)
225g plain flour
finely grated rind of one lemon (or orange)
50g mixed fruit
Pam says the mixed fruit is optional. It is not. This is why my biscuits came out nicely - it is all down to my decision not to omit the mixed fruit.
There is also an extra secret ingredient that I added, albeit unwillingly. More on that later.
Here's a picture of the ingredients! Your actual ingredients may look slightly different, depending on where you buy them from. Note that THEY ARE ALL FRESH. Bought today. Never been opened. This was my idea and my idea alone, and it is the other reason why the biscuits worked.
The first step is to cream the sugar and butter together. Do you remember me saying that you should get the butter up to room temperature? I didn't actually do this. This is how I discovered that creaming half a block of butter straight from the fridge requires the forearms of Geoff Capes - it is a Herculean task. It almost killed me!
Still, one eternity later (with a few pauses to catch my breath and let the blood back into my cramped-up arm) I'd finally whipped the butter and sugar into the required "pale and fluffy" consistency. Time for some beer to help me recover.
Now add the egg yolk and beat well. I'd accidentally started adding flour at this point before I remembered the egg - not to worry, seemed alright. I was getting a bit buttery as well and I didn't want to grease up the camera - so no pictures. You'll just have to take my word for it.
After the egg you stir in the flour and fruit rind. Or you would, if you hadn't forgotten to grate the lemon. Have you ever grated a lemon? It is far more fiddly and dangerous work than people let on. One lesson I learnt today is that a grater capable of grating lemon rind will make short work of the knuckle on your thumb. IT HURT. I was in agony! I did take a picture of the injury but I didn't want to put people off. I suspect the lemon in the wound didn't help matters.
The lesson here is do not drink and grate lemons. And be careful with graters!
So that was the extra ingredient - my own flesh, finely grated and mixed in with the lemon. I'm not saying it made a noticeable difference to the end product, but if you like your biscuits with a bit of meat in them then it might be for you. Personally I think on the whole it's best left out if you can manage it.
OK - so after the egg and the grated rind etc. you add in the flour. It starts getting even more messy at this point. Once they're roughly folded in you get your hands in there (hand in my case) and mix it all up with the super-vital ingredient, the mixed fruit.
It fairly quickly turns into classic biscuit dough (or cookie dough if you're American). This is what you should be aiming for:
Next you should "put the dough on a lightly floured surface and knead lightly, then roll out to 5mm thickness and cut into 6cm rounds". Why do recipes always assume you have a rolling pin? I flattened it out by hand, which I figured would probably cover the light kneading requirement at the same time, and I used a glass to cut the circles. The glass was my idea and far superior to Pam's suggestion of using a cup, which was rubbish - the glass idea is also the other reason why these biscuits came out well.
This is the flattened dough before I went to work with the glass:
This recipe makes like two tons of dough. You might need to cut down on the measurements a little bit. Considering how hard it is to accurately divide an egg yolk (they're terribly difficult to cut evenly unless they've been boiled first) I would suggest just halving the ingredients if you want less dough.
Here are the biscuits in the oven at 180° - they stay in there for 15 minutes:
And here's the finished product:
It pains me to say this but they're *really* nice. Sugary and lemony. They were going to be saved until after tea but I'd inhaled three of them before I could clear the sides and put the rice on.
So, my first biscuit success. I claim all the credit for this, it was all my own work and it was my quick thinking and skill regarding mixed fruit that was principally responsible for the culinary miracle that took place here today. However, I don't want to sound churlish, so thank you for the recipe Pam. Although everyone knows it was all down to my greatness really.
