BELGIUM BISCUITS

June 21, 2012 Alison Lambert

For me and many other's who were brought up on biscuits from the Edmond's Cook Book era then you will surly remember these spiced biscuits sandwiched together with jam and iced. When i was making them for the children i was watching them eating the dough and it took me back to baking with my mum and doing pretty much the same thing. I actually remember liking the dough more than the actual biscuits, but hey i have grown up a little and i seem to almost appreciate the biscuit as much!

The recipe is pretty straight forward, however my mother's advice when making any dough like this is not to add all the flour at once as your dough may not need it and i find it is good to turn your dough out onto your bench and incorporate any extra flour that way as you have more control over final consistency. I also always roll my dough between two sheets of lightly floured greaseproof paper, as this method will ensure dough is kept together as the dough is quite short.

Belgium Biscuits

Adapted from the Edmond's Cookery Book
Makes 10-12 double layer biscuits

125 g butter, softened
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon mixed spice

Icing
3/4 to 1 cup icing sugar
1/4 tsp raspberry or vanilla essence
a few drops of red food colouring
water

Filling
1/2 cup raspberry jam, approximately

Pink sugar
2 tablespoons white sugar
a little pink food colouring
or use jelly crystals

Method
Preheat oven to 180C

Cream butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add egg and beat well. Sift flour, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, mixed spice together. Add 2/3 of dry ingredients and mix to combine, if the dough is still quite sticky sprinkle remaining flour mixture on to your work bench and turn out dough. Gently knead together until the dough is smooth and easy to roll.
Place between two sheets of greaseproof paper with a sprinkling of flour and roll gently out to 3 mm thick. Cut out rounds using a 6.5cm cutter. Carefully transfer these onto a baking tray, re-roll scraps – it may seem more mottled and harder to roll together but don’t worry you can use this half of the dough for the bottom halves.

Bake at 180 C (350F) for 15 minutes or until cooked. When cold, ice the more attractive looking half of the biscuits. Spread the less attractive biscuits with raspberry jam and place iced biscuits on top. Sprinkle with pink sugar or jelly crystals before icing fully sets.

Icing
Mix icing sugar with flavouring and colouring. Add sufficient water to make a pink icing of spreading consistency.

Pink Sugar
To make pink sugar, place sugar in a ziplock bag and add a tiny amount of food colouring. Seal the bag tightly and shake the sugar and massage it with your fingers so that the colouring is evenly spread.