Cocoanut Biscuits

Tues 12 Sept 2006

Yes, you read correctly - and no, there's not a spelling mistake.

The relative unsuccess of the first experiment from A Handbook for Bakers hadn't put me off, and I moved onto the second recipe in the book. These biscuits are a combination of cocoa and coconut (hence the spelling) and sounded promising.

After the usual rejigging of the commercial quantities and trying to take into account what I'd learnt from the spice drops (I didn't really want a mini-sort-of-hard-but-still-cakey-is-it-a-biscuit-or-overdone-small-cake-thing experience again!) this is what I came up with.

Preheat oven to 180C.

Take 100g caster sugar and mix with 50g of butter until smooth and pale. Add 1 egg and mix. Now add 150g plain flour (this was more like 125g in my case because - shock! - the plain flour ran out!), 1tsp cinnamon, 1tbsp cocoa, 50g dessicated coconut and 1 tsp vanilla extract. Mix it all together well.

The original recipe also called for milk - however, because I couldn't use part of an egg I left the milk out so I could check the consistency of the final mixture. I also omitted baking powder.

The mixture was still more cake batter like in consistency. If I'd had more flour I probably would have added more, but, sadly, that wasn't an option. The mixture tasted great - always very important! I plopped the biscuit mix out onto trays and baked for a good 15-20 minutes.

Almost success ... these biscuits were more ... biscuit like. I still wasn't overly thrilled with the texture of them. I've just been rereading some biscuit recipes and I think that were I to have another go I might omit the egg and opt for milk only - and only just enough to bind the dry ingredients. That way I could make a log and cut the biscuits off it prior to baking.

Anyway, the general consensus was that these biscuits were an improvement on the last lot ... and I've almost convinced myself that I probably really do need a biscuit press!!

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