post – Ink Sugar Spice

This year I’m participating in the festive cookie swap run by the wonderful (and award winning) blog “Jul’s Kitchen“, and thanks to a Twitter invite by the lovely Lucy Antal. Juls has stated that 230 people worldwide have participated this year, from countries as diverse as Taiwan and Argentina. Bakers only have to swap with those in their own country though.

If you’d like to read Jul’s blog post for the 2019 challenge you can here, though it’s now too late to join up for 2019. Perhaps set yourself a reminder for early November 2020 your calendar to get involved next year? Jul’s Kitchen is a collaboration between Giulia Scarpaleggia, a Tuscany-based food writer, photographer and tutor and her partner Tommaso Galli, who runs the communication, marketing and assists with tutoring.

The premise is to share the festive love! Bake a couple of batches of biscuits and dispatch them across the country, and you’ll receive cookies back. What’s not to love?! Sharing, having an excuse to bake, feeling festive, giving and receiving gifts and connecting with others.

If you want to look out for what the 230 participating people have shared then search for the hashtags #cookieswap2019 #julskitchen

I was delighted to receive some gorgeous Lancashire tosset biscuits from Lucy Antal and some Calzoncelli biscuits (in a little jar, with a cute pot of lemon curd!) from Katlin Stevens. Thank you ladies!

Here’s my Christmas biscuit recipe that I’ve developed and used for this cookie swap. It produces a relatively dry biscuit, as they did need to get posted. So, this recipe is idea for gifting – through the post or wrapped beautifully and hand delivered with love.

Notes

Makes about 35
Instead of dusting with icing sugar, for extra luxe dip in melted chocolate to finish

Equipment

Saucepan
Large bowl
Two baking sheets, lined
Fine sieve
Wire cooling rack(s)
Wooden spoons, scales

Ingredients

70g of olive oil – I used Filippo Berio’s Classico (your choice of oil to meet your taste preference, but anything from a mild to an extra virgin will work: anything more special/rich/highly flavoured will affect the taste too much)
112g black treacle
2 teaspoons caraway seeds
345g plain flour, preferably tipo 00
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon allspice
1 teaspoon cocoa
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
80g soft brown sugar
1 medium – large egg
zest of one orange
plus you may need 15-20ml milk (depending on the size of the egg you used and humidity/dryness of other ingredients)
Icing sugar to decorate

Method

Warm your oven to 190° C fan / 210° C conventional or 400° F and set the shelves to the middle of your oven
Prepare two baking sheets with greaseproof paper or baking parchment
Weigh the black treacle and the olive oil both out into the saucepan and then add in the caraway seeds
Warm the treacle and oil over a low heat, while stirring with a wooden spoon, until the treacle softens and you can stir the two together (they naturally do not want to combine until warmed). Do not turn the heat up or the treacle will bubble
Once mixed, turn off the heat – do not keep on the heat longer than necessary
Weigh out all the other ingredients into your mixing bowl: flour, baking powder, all three spices, cocoa, vanilla extract, orange zest, sugar and egg and roughly mix them together
Using a sieve over the mixing bowl, pour out the oil and treacle mix so that the caraway seeds are captured in the sieve. (They’ve flavoured the oil and treacle but are now not needed)
Mix all the ingredients together
You may need a little extra milk if your ingredients feel powdery and are not coming together (this is normally due to a smaller size egg, but other things like lack of humidity in your kitchen etc can effect this). Add 15 ml of milk at first, and see if that is enough. Add a little more in tiny increments until you are satisfied – the mix should be robust but clump together well
Take a walnut-sized amount of dough (if you wish to be more precise, 20g of dough is a perfect size) and roll it in your palms to make a rough ball
Slightly squash the dough ball, so it becomes more disc-shaped and place on the baking tray
These biscuits do not spread much, so you can place them about 1-2 cm apart
Bake in the middle of the oven for 12 minutes
Transfer to wire racks to cool and dust with icing sugar when completely cooled