* Ginger Biscuits (Cookies)

I've been making this particular ginger biscuit since I was about 11 or 12 years old. I have a vague memory of the recipe coming from a very old Woman's Weekly recipe book, that someone gave to my mum, for me. Or that I just happened to purloin at some point and never told mum I'd taken it. The only other thing I ever cooked out of that book, was a fish dish that had baked beans and crisps (chips) in it.

Nice.

Don't think I made that one more than once...

... Today, the house was completely nude of biscuits of any description... not the normal status quo - so I thought I might as well take five minutes (quite literally) and make some... however... I've reached that stage in the month, when I'm running out of store cupboard ingredients, so my choice of biscuit was limited to whatever I could make with granulated sugar, a twig and a roll of double sided sticky tape.

I decided to save the twig and sticky tape in case I needed to stick the twig to something at any point in the future.

The granulated sugar was definitely an invitation to make ginger biscuits though.

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Makes roughly 20 biscuits

Prep time - 15 minutes

Cooking time - 10-15 minutes

You will need

A heavy bottomed saucepan

2 baking trays/sheets

Baking parchment

Ingredients

230g butter

2 tbsps golden syrup

340g self raising flour

2 tsps powdered ginger

1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

170g granulated sugar

Method

Pre-heat oven to 190c/160cfan/375f/gas5.

Line the two baking trays/sheets with baking parchment.

Melt the butter and syrup together in the pan, over a gentle heat.

Remove the pan from the heat and using a wooden spoon - stir in the flour, ginger and bicarb to form a soft dough.

Add the sugar last of all, mix thoroughly to combine. The sugar crystals should still be evident, even after mixing it all together.

Form into small balls and place on the baking trays, pressing down slightly to flatten the tops. They can be placed fairly close together, because they don't really spread (unless you ignored the golden syrup quantity and put shed loads in - in which case you'll be making ONE BIG BISCUIT that you can roll up like a cigar and chew the end off... fun... but not the end goal).

Bake in the oven for 10 - 15 minutes, until just beginning to turn golden brown.

At this stage, you could be forgiven for thinking that they aren't quite cooked, because they are incredibly soft and spongy - however - leave them on the trays until completely cool - up to half an hour - and they firm up into a lovely sugary cookie.