Sugar & Spice Valentine Biscuits - Spread the Love
Okay, I admit it, I’m not your typical romantic, tending to eschew all things related to the pink fluffy saccharine Hollywood version of romance. Although, I get the feeling that the odd chapter of a Mills & Boon might be entertaining, complete with bodice-ripping and pulsating biceps, of course.
I’m not going to go into the whole “Valentine’s day is a commercialised piece of poo” spiel… as long as my partner loves me just as much at other times of the year, I don’t mind.
Anyway, during my halcyon years at Uni, which isn’t too long ago, I started a tradition. Unfortunately, no-one else has taken it up… yet! I decided to bake a huge batch of cookies… wrapped them up in a nice rose-patterned napkin, tied with a bow in sweet little parcels… and distributed them to all of my friends, just to let them know how much I loved them all too…
Normally, I use a really good recipe for Shrewsbury Biscuits… I just love that sweet, spicy lemon and cinnamon combo… the flavour is just unusual enough to stand out, and is evocative of both summery and Christmassy feelings.. not to mention the subtle scent of roses 
… but roll-on 2007 and I couldn’t find my recipe! Oh noes… I have to invent it from scratch again… after a (very) brief scout on the net, I found a reasonable starting point, so this recipe is based on the recipe from the BBC. Unfortunately, this batch didn’t turn out as well as my normal recipe… the lemon didn’t have enough tang, and there wasn’t enough warmth from the spices… next time I will remember to use a little more of the lemon zest and the cinnamon, you might want to adjust these to your own taste anyway. Anyway, enough waiting, here’s my recipe:-
Yvonne’s Sugar & Spice Valentine Biscuits Recipe
Ingredients
- 8oz plain flour
- 1 level tsp. baking powder
- 4ozs caster sugar
- 4ozs Cold Butter
- 1/4 tsp. nutmeg
- 1/2 tsp. Cinnamon (I think I will add a full tsp. next time)
- 1 tsp. rose water (The flavour is very subtle here and is mostly added because I like the idea of using essence of roses at this time of year, you can cut it out altogether, or add another teaspoon as you like.)
- 1 tsp. Vanilla Extract (If you want to be fancy, you can add real vanilla seeds)
- 1 Egg
- Zest of 1 whole Unwaxed Lemon (I think I will add the zest of another whole lemon next time, the lemon flavour was really disappointing this time round.)
- 1 quick squeeze of lemon juice (may be ommitted if your dough looks too wet as it is.)
Cooking Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 190°C or Gas Mark 5
- Mix the flour, sugar, nutmeg and cinnamon together and seive the lot into a large bowl.
- Chop up the butter straight out of the fridge and chop into half-inch cubes. Add the butter cubes to the flour mix and rub all of the butter in with the tips of your fingers, ending up with a fine-crumb mixture.
- Mix the egg, rose water, vanilla, lemon zest and lemon juice in a small bowl.
- Add your egg mixture to the flour mixture, combine and knead lightly to form a soft dough.
- Take roughly a quarter of the dough and place on a floured surface and roll out to roughly 5mm thickness, you may want to experiment with this. In the meantime, put the rest of the dough in the fridge.
- Use your favourite cookie cutters, I used stars and little men here. I suppose you could use hearts if you want…
- Place your cut-out cookies onto a greased baking tray, fairly widely spread out. I used a tray with a non-stick baking sheet, these are wonderful, and no need for greasing. If you can find them, you should definitely buy them, and let me know where I can get more, ours is a bit old now, and a tad worse for wear, but we’ve not been able to find any of them anywhere…
- Place your full baking tray in the oven, and bake for 10 - 13 mins, or until they’re just turning golden.
- Whilst they’re cooking, work on rolling and cutting the rest of the dough.
- You might want to leave the cookies to cool slightly on a wire rack after you’ve taken them out of the oven. Eat a couple, just to check they’re ok, of course.
- You don’t have to give the biscuits away, you could just snarf them all by yourself, but this recipe makes… uh, loads (30-odd, depending on the size of your cutters and how thinly you roll.)… and I love giving them away to friends.
Little Bundles of Luv
- Once the biscuits have sufficiently cooled, they’re ready to pack.
- Take two napkins, one of them can be a plain white one, but it’s nice if one has an interesting design.
- Open up both napkins
- Place the fancy design napkin on the table
- Place your plain napkin on top at a 45 degree angle so that the corners are overlapping
- Place two or three biscuits in the centre
- Gather up the edges and tie with a rubber band or a pretty ribbon.
- Voilá your bundle of cookie love is ready to give to one friend.
- Now Go Forth and make more cookie parcels.
You can also see this recipe on my Open Source Food account here.