Milk & Cookies, Yummy in my Tummy

The school holidays have come round again, and there are only so many outdoor activities you can do with a 3 year old. It was time to bake some cookies and I picked Nigella's recipe for Butter Cut-Out Biscuits (i.e. cookie biscuits, not American biscuits).

These biscuits were dead-easy to make. But make sure you have some time on your hands as you will need to chill the dough in the refrigerator for at least an hour. First, you cream together the butter and sugar, then beat in the eggs before mixing with the dry ingredients. (As usual, I used a bit less sugar than in the recipe.) You form two fat discs with the dough, and clingfilm them for chilling in the refrigerator.

After an hour, we retrieved one disc, rolled it out and started stamping. My boy had great fun with this part. We used number-shaped cookie cutters (just as Nigella had done) and also some other small shapes. We were able to cut out so many cookies (running out of space on the baking sheet), that we decided not to use the other disc of dough, but to freeze it for use some other time.

They took hardly any time to cook and tasted really buttery and had a nice meltingly smooth texture to them. Beautiful with milk! It felt so old-fashioned and comforting.

We iced some of the cookies for effect (since the recipe calls for it and it looked so pretty in the picture). But I left a good number plain as I did not want Junior to get a sugar-high and start with the tantrums (which he did anyway coz he stole a few iced biscuits).

I will definitely be doing this again, seeing that I have the other disc of dough in the freezer, but this time, no icing necessary...

Lily's Scones

I bought a new baking board, and with friends coming over for bible study, I thought that it was finally time to make some proper scones. Nigella has just this one scone recipe in the Domestic Goddess, which she describes as "the best scones I've ever eaten". But she would say that wouldn't she? Anyway, my previous attempts at scones weren't too successful, so I was hopeful this time round.

Apart from the usual suspects of flour, butter and milk, the ingredients also included shortening, cream of tartar (which, according to Nigella, gives the appearance of cellulite, but which also gives them a "dreamy lightness") and salt.

First you rub in the fats with the dry ingredients. Then you pour in the milk, mix briefly before turning it out to knead. The hard part I found was kneading the dough, especially since the mixture is very sticky. Your hands will get really icky but bear with it and you will soon be able to roll out the dough and stamp out the scones with a cutter. I managed to form 15 pieces (the recipe says it makes 12), but I think it was because I rolled the dough out a bit thinner than the recipe called for. Then you egg-wash it before you put it into the oven.

These take 10 mins to cook. And are lovely. They are firm on the outside, and really soft and light on the inside. Wonderful on its own or with some jam and cream. They are the best scones I've made. Though I think, because of the salt and shortening and the lack of sugar, they taste more like Biscuits (a la the American South), than scones. Frankly, these remind me more of my Alabama days than my England days. In particular, the Blue Plate Cafe (Memphis, TN) and the Loveless Cafe (Nashville, TN), where I had some of the best biscuits ever. Until I tasted their biscuits, I was not a fan of biscuits. Then, I was made a convert. I prefer my scones sweet, so I will continue to look out for a good scone recipe. But I will definitely do Lily's scones again, coz they're the closest thing to Blue Plate and Loveless I've got in Singapore!