Biscuit Making - The Ginger
I want to conquer biscuits. In any one of my several hundred cookbooks there are pages of such bi-cuitery that I've looked at and bi-passed. Fear not I thought. No longer can I delay, I mean they gain tons of groats for turning gingerbread out in Grasmere. How hard can it be?
With parking change I buy various cookie shapers in the style of a horse, bells, persons, a guitar for 50p, hearts, Christmas trees, squares and circles from charity shops, there must be loads of failed cookie cutters out there and have a go at gingerbread men. I seriously considered a book about decorating biscuits for several seconds also. It will still be there if I change my mind in the next decade.
I'm fully aware that I'll never scale the dizzy heights of a custard cream or even a hobnob, but surely a ginger nut or ginger bread person est facile cucina?
Look at the pic.
Even the birds left them and it's cold outside in Cumbria in November.
Some men master the bbq, others just burn bangers.
I can do this. I think.
So ginger effort two, Bullas biscuits.
So these large round ginger cookies, pic above, are Jamaican Bullas, cakes or biscuits but thicker, a bit hard outside yet soft inside. Jamaicans eat them with 'pear' which is actually avocado... Or with cheese. Even mine are good with cheese.
Bullas are kinda Kingston street food and I like these. I don't think I got them right. Bit too hard, not fiery enough, But that's okay They didn't rise enough either - about a cm, should be two. I think they could be great.
Someone said, 'they'd be quite nice if thin, Andrew'.
'Umm'' I think even within the ginger biscuit fraternity there's discrimination. Give me a year I said, and I'll be able to do these as I pull a posh packet of proper Booths biscuits out of the cupboard that cost lots. The biscuits I mean not the cupboard that came with the house so I don't know how expensive it was.
Baking is science and apparently baking powder degrades when old, test it by putting some in some water and if it does nothing like mine did, it's no good. Bicarb fizzes in vinegar and mine did
I'll have another go next week...