Friday, August 7, 2009

Belgium Biscuits


It was my parents’ wedding anniversary a couple of weeks ago. One of my dad’s favourite biscuits is Belgium Biscuits, so I thought I would make Belgium biscuits with a twist by cutting the cookies into heart shaped for their wedding anniversary.

Belgium biscuits are spicy thin, crispish cookies sandwiched together with raspberry jam. You make the dough, roll it out thinly, cut into shapes (traditionally scalloped edged rounds), bake and then join together with jam. One side of the finished cookie is iced and then sprinkled with raspberry jelly crystals (you do that bit before the joining together).

The recipe I usually use to make Belgium Biscuits is one handed down from my great Aunty Jean. It is a great recipe with a dough that is easy to roll and cut. As I like to make different recipes, I thought I would make the recipe from ladies, a Plate. I was actually a bit disappointed with the recipe. The recipe has a higher ratio of butter and sugar than my usual recipe which made it very soft to work with. I refrigerated the dough before using, something I don’t normally do with Aunty Jean’s recipe. The cookies actually spread quite a bit on the tray so I re-cut them once they had cooled as they had completely lost their heart shapes. The finished cookies were a bit softer than I like and were quite buttery. Mum and dad said that they really enjoyed them, but I am going to stick with Aunty Jean’s recipe which I have given below as I think you will like the result better.

Belgium Biscuits

160g butter
160g brown sugar
1 egg
1 tbsp golden syrup (you could leave this out if you are in the US and it is hard to find)
180g flour
160g cornflour
1 dsp cocoa
1 ½ tsp each mixed spice and cinnamon
1 tsp baking powder
1 scant tsp baking soda

• Cream butter and sugar and then beat in egg and golden syrup
• Mix in dry ingredients.
• Roll out dough thinly (5mm thick) and cut into rounds or desired shapes
• Bake at 180c for 14 minutes
• When cold, ice half of the biscuits with simple icing made with icing sugar and water (I like to tint mine a pale pink) and sprinkle with raspberry jelly crystals
• Join an un-iced base to an iced top with raspberry jam

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I bought Ladies a Plate yesterday and had planned to make BB on the weekend so your blog was timely.LaP recipe called for 225g butter/sugar,so it is a change for the better.Thanks for the tip.Love your blog.

Jacque said...

Ooh, interesting. I've never heard of these, they do look good. How sweet of you to make them special for your parents.

Cakelaw said...

So cute!