Taking the biscuit - Christmas gifts?
A recipe for your grandmother's choccy cookies
When my sister and I were small, my mother regularly baked vanilla and chocolate cookies. They were crumbly yet crisp like the best of shortbread and just as buttery, but much lighter. While they were cooking, the house would fill with the warm scent of vanilla and the velvet richness of chocolate.
I didn’t really give them much thought until I opened up one of Nigella Lawson’s cookbooks and found a recipe for them called Granny Boyd's Biscuits. No, they’re not, I objected. They’re not Granny Boyd’s, whoever she is. They’re Our Mother’s Biscuits! Besides, her ‘Granny Boyd’ recipe only offered a chocolate variety, whereas our mother would split the dough into two, adding chocolate to one half and vanilla extract to the other.
It turns out Granny Boyd is the grandmother of Nigella’s editor. All writers know one must treat an editor with delicacy and respect and generally accept whatever they say. I’m guessing this biscuit recipe probably originated in the fifties or sixties, possibly even on the back of a cocoa tin or a flour packet, and could just as easily be called ‘My Granny’s biscuits’.
At any time of year, they’re a useful cookie to have around. They store well without losing their crispness - if you can keep them that long. They're perfect to pass around with a cup of tea or an espresso, a bowl of ice cream or a fruit compote both in winter and summer to make it just that bit more special. Press two together with a filling of ice cream to drip down your front.
But Christmas is when they come into their own. They make welcome presents, wrapped informally in baking parchment and tied with a ribbon if you don’t have a pretty tin to give away. If you are in possession of small children or visiting grandchildren, it’s a perfect recipe to get them to make - quick and easy and leaving a sticky bowl of left-over dough smears delicious for swiping a finger around.
The odd thing about cookies at Christmas is there are some that only appear at this time of year. When else do you see gingerbread men? Or brandysnaps - if you see those at all. Though these days of Good Friday’s Hot Cross Buns having become a quotidian event, no treats are without exploitation…
A dear American friend spends the first weeks of December up to her elbows in flour making anise-flavoured sugar cookies which I imagine must be German in origin, since the Germans are usually credited with inventing every aspect of Christmas from cards to wreaths.
The first Christmas tree was reputedly introduced to England in 1840 by Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s consort, with one recorded in a temporary hospital for German soldiers in 1871, below.
But while Prince Albert generally takes the credit for our modern Christmas, it was an earlier German who established the tree tradition. ‘Good Queen Charlotte’, the long-suffering German wife of George III (probably not mad but porphyric), erected the first known decorated tree at Queen’s Lodge in Windsor, in December 1800.
In Germany, the tradition began centuries earlier. The story goes that religious reformer Martin Luther was walking through a pine forest near his Wittenberg home one winter’s night in 1536 when he looked up and spied the twinkle of stars glinting through the branches of the trees. Filled with wonder, he set one up for his children, decorating it with candles to inspire them with thoughts of heaven. By 1605, records describe the householders of Strasbourg placing “fir trees in the parlours…and hang[ing] thereon roses cut out of many-coloured paper, apples, wafers, gold-foil, sweets, etc.”
Nigella only provides a chocolate version for her year-round, very British, Granny biscuits. Her editor doesn’t seem familiar with the possibility of making a vanilla variety. The only quibble I have with her recipe is that she and her editor don’t add enough cocoa powder. They suggest 30 grams, just over 1 ounce. My mother went for more, so I always use 50 grams, 1¾ ounces.
If you’re going to make vanilla-flavoured biscuits as well as chocolate ones, hold back the cocoa powder (reducing the amount to 25 grams or 3 flat tablespoons) and add it only after you’ve reached the point where you can split the dough in two. Then add the cocoa to one half and a teaspoonful of vanilla extract to the other. Not the ubiquitous supermarket Vanilla Essence, please, which is manufactured and so contains very little or no real vanillin and should be banned for its ersatz flavour. I would add the vanilla extract anyway to all the dough base including the cocoa version, for extra depth of flavour.
Nigella also recommends a secondary baking time of 10-15 minutes, whereas I go for 20 minutes. Oven temperatures do vary, so check at 15 minutes that the biscuits feel crisp to the touch. If still spongy, keep them in a further 5. They will quickly firm up as they cool.
The amount the dough makes means you’ll need to bake them in two batches, unless you own two baking sheets.
To make 30-35 biscuits
300g/10½ oz self-raising/all-purpose flour
50g/1¾ oz cocoa powder and/or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (my addition)
250g/8¾ oz unsalted butter (room temperature)
125g/4¼ oz caster sugar
Preheat the oven to 190C/375F. Sift together the flour and cocoa powder into a mixing bowl and set aside.
With an electric hand whisk (or wooden spoon), cream together the butter and sugar until light and pale in colour.
Mix in the sifted flour and cocoa. You will think you need liquid to bring the mix together, but keep working the ingredients and it will form a dough.
Damp your hands and spoon walnut-sized balls of dough into them. Roll the dough between your palms and, spacing them well apart because they will spread, arrange them on the baking sheets, wetting your palms whenever necessary. Gently flatten each ball with the back of the tines of a fork. It makes them pretty.
Bake the biscuits in the preheated oven for 5 minutes, then turn the temperature down to 170C/340F for a further 15-20 minutes. The biscuits should feel firm on top but not hard.
Remove from the oven and transfer to cool completely on a wire rack before storing in an airtight container.
What a delight to be reminded of these delicious biscuits- off to buy the cocoa powder now!
I originally referred to ginger snaps. But aoyal reader pointed out I meant brandysnaps. Now corrected.