Ginger sparkle biscuits

 April 7, 2023

   

I am just about through my to-cook list from In Praise of Veg! These ginger biscuits looked best suited to autumn/winter conditions so I saved them up for the Easter weekend. We already have a few ginger biscuit recipes on the blog, and the special features that drew me to these ones were the Chinese five-spice in the dough and the pretty slices of crystallised ginger on top.

I get less excited about the prospect of rolling out dough, but this one was easy to manoeuvre between two sheets of plastic wrap. I cut the biscuits into simple circles, and slightly regret that I didn't go for moose, although moose might have lacked the soft centre of these just-slightly-underbaked rounds. I couldn't really detect the full spectrum of the five spices in these biscuits, but they were warming sweet comfort regardless - I'd gladly bake them again.

 

Ginger sparkle biscuits

(a recipe from Alice Zaslavsky's In Praise of Veg)

1/3 cup molasses

120g butter

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1 egg, beaten

1 1/2 cups plain flour, plus extra for dusting

1 1/2 tablespoons ground ginger

1 1/2 teaspoons Chinese five-spice

150g brown sugar

1/4 cup coffee sugar crystals (or raw sugar)

1/4 crystallised ginger, finely sliced

Melt together the molasses and butter in a large saucepan over high heat. When they're well mixed and smooth, turn off the heat and stir in the bicarbonate of soda. The mixture will froth up to double its original volume. Set the mixture aside to cool. When the molasses mixture is ready, whisk in the egg. 

In a large bowl, stir together the flour, ground ginger, five-spice and brown sugar. Pour the molasses mixture into these dry ingredients, and stir everything together to form a dough. Divide the mixture in half. Place each half onto a sheet of plastic wrap, form it into a disc, and wrap it up. Refrigerate the dough discs for at least an hour, and even overnight if it suits.

Preheat an oven to 180°C. Line a baking tray or two with paper. 

Retrieve one of the dough discs from the fridge and roll it out to 5mm thick. You can dust a clean surface and rolling pin. Instead I rolled my dough between the two plastic wraps sheets that I'd already used. Use your favourite biscuit cutter to make shapes from the dough and place them on the baking tray(s). Repeat with the remaining dough, rolling up the scraps to make more biscuits. Scatter the biscuits with sugar crystals and crystallised ginger slices, then bake them for 7-8 minutes, until a light golden brown.