Nothing fancy, slightly lemony, easy to make and so traditional a sight in Italy or Italo-phile countries like Malta. These little numbers appear on the street stalls come festa time and are usually sold by the weight.

As it’s been bit of a tough week what with trying to recover from bronchitis, and my beloved cat of 17 years passing away, I’ve not been into cooking to much. But, a week on, and as it’s Sunday, I needed something sweet and bright to lighten up the heaviness of the past seven days. Clouds cleared early on after a sudden thunder storm, and these little Italian biscuits beckoned for tea.

The recipe is from Nigella’s ‘How to be a Domestic Goddess’, a bible I turn to for a lot of baking. For some strange reason, her quantities seemed awry. She wrote that it wouldn’t be a firm batter as the biscuits needed piping out. My mix was so stiff that I almost overheated and broke my hand mixer! When does one egg, even if large, manage to moisten 350g of flour? I am sure she has something amiss in her write-up; perhaps later reprints of the book have different quantities.

So, my write-up below is adapted from Nigella’s Italian Biscuits, by adding two eggs, a couple of tbsps of milk and juice of a lemon to ensure the batter would go through the piping nozzle! I have a Sicilian book with a very similar biscuit recipe but those are made entirely of almond flour and required 1kg of almonds to 1kg sugar. That recipe too sounded OTT, but I may experiment mixing some ground almonds to go half-half with the flour in this recipe next time I make it. You’ll get around 30 biscuits; they go like hot cakes. Perhaps that’s why the whole kilo amounts in the Sicilian version. After all, at festa time they do fly off the stands.

All images © Liz Ayling 2014

Italian Biscuits

Adapted from Nigella Lawson’s ‘How to be a Domestic Goddess’, p63.

Simple Italian biscuits

 

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Prep time

15 mins

Cook time

12 mins

Total time

27 mins

 

Simple, delightful any-time-of-day biscuits for tea or coffee. The sort you see across Italy in confectioners windows; usually sold by weight.

Recipe type: Cakes & Biscuits

Cuisine: Italian

Serves: 30

Ingredients

• 225g unsalted butter, softenedprint button transparent
• 100g caster sugar
• 350g plain flour
• ½ tsp baking powder
• pinch of salt
• zest and juice of a medium lemon
• 2 large eggs
• 2 tbsps milk (may be needed to loosen the mix – optional)
• Glace’ cherries, halved.

Method

1. Pre-heat oven to 180°C.
2. Cream the butter and sugar together with an electric mixer til it fluffs up and goes paler and smooth.
3. Add the lemon zest, juice, beaten eggs and continue beating on a medium speed to incorporate all the liquid well.
4. Add the flour, baking powder and salt, a little at a time, mixing in each batch well. The mix needs to be a dropping consistency, not too firm nor too runny as it will be piped to form biscuits. Add a little milk if it’s too firm still, but go easy. If you find it’s too runny, add a bit more sieved flour.
5. Place a medium star-shaped nozzle in a piping bag and spoon in some mixture. Squeeze the bag to ease the mix into the nozzle. Pipe out rosettes onto a non-stick baking tray or baking parchment, ensuring they are around 5cm apart.
6. Halve the cherries and place a piece in the centre of each rosette biscuit.
7. Bake for around 10-12 minutes until just going golden on the edges. The centre of the biscuits should still be quite pale.
8. Remove from the oven when cooked and cool on a wire rack. When cool, store in an air-tight container. They will keep well for around 3 days. You can freeze them. These biscuits are a slightly cake-consistency, rather than brittle and dry.

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