B is for Bourbon Biscuits

Time to bake the second letter of the alphabet and if I’m honest, this was my second choice, but I had two ingredients missing from the other recipe and even though I’d been into town a couple of times, I had forgotten on both occasions to buy the missing ingredients.  I say it’s to do with my age!!

So, this was actually my second choice.  The family love Bourbon Biscuits and if I ever buy any you can bet that the packet will be open within an hour of me arriving home with them and it won’t be much long after that they will have all gone.  They’re great to dunk in a cup of tea too.

So, will these live up to the packet version!

Ingredients

• 50g softened butter
• 50g golden caster sugar
• 1 tbsp golden syrup
• 110g plain flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 15g cocoa powder
• 2 tbsp milk

Filling

• 25g softened butter
• 50g icing sugar
• 2 tsp cocoa powder
• Few drops of water

Method

1. Preheat the oven to Fan 170C, 190C, 375F, Gas Mark 5 and line a couple of baking sheets.
2. Cream the butter and sugar together (I used an electric hand mixer as my KitchenAid didn’t really want to know about this small amount of butter and sugar!) until pale and fluffy.  Add the golden syrup and beat in.
3. Sift in the flour, baking powder and cocoa powder and mix together.
4. Add 1  tbsp of the milk and mix together with your hands.  You may have to add the other tablespoon in order to get the mixture to come together to form a dough.  You don’t want a crumbly dough.  Knead the dough for a minute or two.
5. Place the dough between two sheets of cling film and roll out into a rectangle (or as good as you can).  Trim the sides and cut the dough into long strips about 2.5cm wide and then cut the strips into 5cm lengths.  Transfer to the lined baking sheets and prick the top with a form.
6. Place in the oven for about 12 minutes.  Watch them really carefully as the edges to burn very quickly (a few of mine did).
7. Once baked transfer the biscuits to a wire rack and allow to cool.
8. To make the filling, cream the butter, icing sugar and cocoa together.  Add a few drops of water if necessary until your buttercream is of a spreadable consistency.
9. Spread the mixture onto one biscuit and place another on top.  If you fancy you could pipe the filling in which would probably make them look prettier!  I made 30 biscuits from this mixture (so 15 complete biscuits once the filling had been added).

Well, my verdict, they were tasty, but the filling was a little sickly.  The family must have enjoyed them, however, as they certainly didn’t hang around for long.  Perhaps it was because there were only 15 and they were roughly the same size as the branded variety.