The Great Biscuit Bake Off...

Tiki's Bakehouse biscuits

I have to admit I am rather partial to a biscuit or two with my cup of tea or coffee, if it's a biscuit that will stand up to being dunked then even better.

Since being bitten by the baking bug a few years ago, after watching too many episodes of The Great British Bake Off, I have slowly been switching from buying in my sweet treats to baking them myself and it has to be said that home made really knocks the socks off mass produced where cakes are concerned so it made sense to apply the same theory to biscuits.

I hadn't really baked biscuits in many, many years. I remember as a kid I would raid the cupboards for anything I could find. Flour, oats, syrup, sultanas, milk...sometimes I remembered butter sometimes I didn't...my ingredient list was random and the quantities undefined but somehow I managed to bake something vaguely edible. Usually they turned out resembling something similar to a flapjack. Well they must have been ok as my two older brothers usually managed to eat most of them despite the faces that they pulled and the cries of "that looks disgusting" when I proudly took my creations out of the oven. Since then I've dabbled with an occasional gingerbread man at Christmas (and carbonised quite a few of them) and more recently, at Dear Hubby's request, I made a few attempts at finding a recipe for the perfect soft bake chocolate chip cookie (still not found the perfect recipe yet) but, despite owning more cookie cutters than I know what to do with, as far as home baking is concerned I hadn't really paid biscuits much attention.

Once upon a time I would have been happy with just a handful of McVitie's Rich Tea biscuits to accompany my cup of tea but nowadays I prefer something a bit more interesting. I had fairly recently discovered La Mere Poulard biscuits, my attention having been drawn to the oh so pretty tins, but the biscuits and cookies inside were absolutely delicious. Made to old French recipes they were flavourful without being too sweet. I was hooked. I just had to learn to bake my own biscuits. I pored over my recipe books trying to find the perfect recipe but I couldnt decide what to try first. Just so many recipes to choose from, and I had quite a few that were at the top of my list. Mostly recipes from my french recipe books. One in particular was the Petit Beurre biscuit, the picture in the recipe book looked so good I wanted to pluck one out of the page and eat it right there and then. It had to be the first one I would try.

So I finally got myself into the kitchen and had a go at making my own biscuits. Tiki's Bakehouse biscuits! I had not long before got my hands on some cookie cutters that you can put your own message in the stamp so I could really make these delicious biscuits my own. Well ok, I admit, it's not my own recipe but I've adapted the method a little to suit using a mixer. If like me you have rather warm hands, which melt the butter as your working the dough, then you might prefer this method. You can mix the biscuit dough by hand if you wish, in fact that's the method given in the recipe book, but I have particularly warm hands so I used a stand mixer. 

Petit Beurre Biscuits

Petit Beurre...up close and personalised

These biscuits are very similar to a shortbread biscuit but are rolled out much thinner than the Scottish variety and have a creamier flavour. They are really simple to make and taste delicious.

(Adapted from a recipe in 'The Art of French Baking by Ginette Mathiot)

Makes approximately 18 biscuits

100g unsalted butter, chilled and cubed (plus a little extra for greasing)

250g plain flour (plus a bit extra for dusting)

50g caster sugar

Pinch of salt

100ml double cream

Preheat oven to 180C

Grease two baking trays with butter or line with non stick baking paper.

Put the flour and butter into the mixer bowl and mix on a very slow speed for approximately 5 minutes until the butter is thoroughly mixed in and the mixture resembles bread crumbs.

Make a well in the centre of the mixture and put the sugar and salt into the well first and then the cream. Putting the cream in last helps it mix with the dry ingredints rather than just coating the mixing bowl.
Mix on a slow speed until all the ingredients are evenly combined and the dough starts to bind together.

Take the dough from the bowl and knead just a little to make sure dough is smooth. 

Leave the dough to rest in a covered bowl at room temperature for about an hour. 

Dust the work surface with flour. Roll out the dough to a thickness of about 5mm.

Cut out rectangles approximately 5cmx10cm, either by hand or with a cookie cutter, and place on the baking tray. 

Prick the surface with a fork to prevent them rising up and help them bake evenly.

Bake for approximately 25-30 minutes, until pale golden brown.

Remove from the oven and transfer to a rack to cool.

Once cooled, enjoy with a nice cup of tea or coffee.