Gingerbread biscuits

These are actually called Honey and ginger wafers in Dan Lepard’s essential book The Handmade Loaf. Mine, however, weren’t in any way wafer-ish, so let’s just stick with calling them gingerbread biscuits eh?

Very handsome biscuits these ones. As usual, I’m not satisfied with my photos, as none of them show the neat forked pattern on the top.

These biscuits use a pretty comprehensive spice mix, which I simplified marginally due to a lack of a couple of the spices (seriously, even if your spice cupboard is bursting at the seams, but you’ll always find yourself lacking a spice or two when you start to make a recipe. Sod’s law). I just used 1 t coriander seeds, 1 t ground cinnamon, 1/2 t grated nutmeg, 1/4 t black peppercorns, 2 t ground ginger, 2 cardamon pods, all ground up together (with pestle and mortar, or electric grinder).

The dough consists of:
250g runny honey
150g unsalted butter
2 T double cream
200g plain white flour
200g light rye flour
1 t bicarb of soda
100g soft brown sugar
plus the spice mix.

Preheat the oven to 210C.

You melt the butter with the honey, then cool it a little and mix in the cream.

In a large bowl, combine all the dry ingredients, including the spice mix.

Then blend the wet mix into the dry mix, and mix to a dough. I found it way too wet, so added a little more flour. Mr Lepard’s bread recipes often use very moist doughs, but in the case of these biscuits, it just didn’t seem like it would be possible to roll and cut the dough if it was soggy and sticky.

Rest the dough in the fridge for 2 hours, then roll it out to 5mm and cut 80mm discs. Place them on baking sheets (the recipe says “lined with non-stick baking parchment”, but my sheets are pretty well-seasoned so I just greased them lightly and it was fine).

Make a glaze using 1 egg and 1 egg yolk, whisked with 1/4 t salt. Glaze the biscuits, then mark a grid pattern on each with a fork.

Bake for 10-15 mins until golden brown.

The seem to last very well if stored in a good sealed tin or tupperware.