Cooking Challenge update 12.02.12 Cardamom biscuits

Another 2 recipes to tick off the Cooking Challenge list - yippee!

Last night I made pasta, chorizo and cannellini bean soup (click here for the full recipe), which was really really tasty, and today my friend Amy came over and we baked cardamom biscuits (another one from Ravinder Bhogal). I had tried to make the biscuits previously but since I didn't have gram flour (otherwise known as chickpea or besan flour) at the time, I wasn't sure if they'd turned out right or not so I didn't want to tick them off the list without giving them another go.

I did a bit of research and found out that Tesco's sold Gram Flour so while my car was in the garage getting MOT'd yesterday I popped to Tesco's to get some. Unfortunately I didn't check how big the bags were so when I eventually found it I was a bit shocked to see it only sold in huge 2kg bags - the recipe only needs 50g per batch (!), so I think I'm going to have to find some more recipes that use gram flour...oops!

Anyway, as there were two of us baking I thought we may as well make two batches, so that we could each have some to give to our respective partners, and also colleagues, although in my case that might depend on how hungry Tom is when he gets back from work...

The last time I tried this my main issue with the recipe was that the biscuit mix seemed to be very dry and crumbly, so it was quite difficult to get it to a point where it was all coming together to be able to knead it into a good dough, but I wasn't sure if maybe the lack of gram flour was to blame for this. I think in the end I added a bit more oil and an egg to try to get it to bind better and they turned out ok in the end. But I was interested to see whether using gram flour made any difference or not this time.

Anyway, preamble over, here's what I used and how I did it:

Ingredients (made approx 26 small biscuits)
120ml - 150 ml sunflower oil, plus extra to grease (original recipe used 100ml vegetable oil, but I found it was too floury and wasn't binding so added more)
200g plain flour
50g gram (chickpea) flour
75g icing sugar
1/2 tsp crushed cardamom seeds
14 pistachios, shelled and cut in half lengthways

Method (NB. Just because we split the tasks doesn't mean this recipe can't be done very easily on your own!)
1. We preheated the oven to 180c and I greased a couple of baking sheets with some of the sunflower oil and some greaseproof paper.

2. While I was doing this, Amy ground up the cardamom seeds in the pestle and mortar (that she got me for my birthday as it happens), and I shelled the pistachios. If you've not used cardamom before, it normally comes in a jar of pods, so you need to split them open with a sharp knife and remove the seeds (ideally separating them from the inner bit that they are attached to), and then just grind them in a pestle and mortar.

3. Then I sifted the dry ingredients into a mixing bowl and stirred them together with a whisk, while Amy halfed the pistachios for me.

4. Then we added 100ml of sunflower oil to the mix and Amy started mixing it with her hands. When we realised it just wasn't binding we added a little more oil and it seemed to do the trick. It was a lot easier to bring together, and then we could start kneading it into a firm dough as the recipe had told us to.

5. Once the dough was ready we took heaped teaspoons of the dough (my measuring spoons are like mini ice cream scoops so they were perfect for this!) and rolled the dough into a ball in our hands.

6. We then flattened each ball ever so slightly so it was still domed (the recipe said to flatten into a disc, but we made the first batch like this, and they didn't look right), and then pressed a pistachio half into the middle and popped it on the baking tray. I think the first batch we made yielded about 25 biscuits and the second one did about 27.

Second batch ready to go in the oven. I love the colour of pistachios.

7. Once we'd filled both the trays and used up all the mix we popped the trays into the oven. Now the recipe said to bake for 25 minutes until the biscuits are a nice golden brown. The first time we did this we set a timer to turn the trays around and swap the shelves after ten minutes, giving them twenty minutes in total, but I'm not sure if my oven is just a bit wonky, but the first batch definitely seemed a bit overdone and dry. So the second time, I set the timer for 7 minutes to swap them around, and then gave them another 7 minutes. After this point, i.e. 14 minutes, the larger tray of biscuits looked the right colour, but the smaller tray wasn't quite there so I gave them another couple of minutes in the hotter part of the oven. I think the key is to just keep checking them to make sure they don't overbake!!

8. When I took them out of the oven they were an even light golden brown colour, and cracked on top, and when I used the spatula to take them off the tray they seemed to be a tiny bit soft still, but they crumbled a little bit on the edges if we weren't careful, so I took that to mean they were done. NB. Don't try to use your fingers to transfer them to the cooling rack, as the biscuits will be flipping hot and you'll just end up burning yourself...trust me, I know.

9. I then left them to cool on a rack (I figured if they were a little soft in the middle that they'd set as they cooled).

Pretty, high contrast photo ;)

Having left them quite to cool while I typed up these two recipes, I've just tried one now, and they do taste better than the first batch (i.e.not overdone), however they are still a little bit too dry for my taste. I'd definitely need a cup of tea or something to go with them, but then I think I've always liked to have a drink with biscuits, so maybe it's just me!

I think if I tried them again I would maybe experiment with reducing the amount of flour slightly and adding a tiny bit more icing sugar and perhaps a bit more crushed cardamom, just to up the flavour a little bit. Don't get me wrong, they were nice and crumbly and had a gentle, subtle flavour, not too sickly sweet or overpoweringly aromatic, but I think personally, they could do with a tiny bit more sugar and just a wee bit more cardamom, but I suppose that's down to personal taste. Now I think about it, I'm sure I read somewhere that gram flour can come in a paste form so perhaps if I had gram flour in this format the mixture mightn't be quite so dry... hmmm, food for thought!

To round up, that takes the cooking challenge 2012 totals to:

8 recipes completed           64 recipes to go       46 weeks remaining

Anyway, I better get some other food in the oven now - Mum gave me some chicken, bacon and mushroom in the fridge to use in a stew / to roast so better get cracking!

Bye for now!
Lettie xx