I found an interesting recipe for these Cardamom and Lemon biscuits(cookies) on the BBC Food site. It is a recipe from The Hairy Bikers. Since I had some cardamom that I had ground myself a few weeks ago, and a lemon that was sitting looking sorry for itself, I thought I would give them a try.
As with most biscuit recipes this is fairly simple. The most difficult thing is to divide the dough into roughly equal portions. I resorted to weighing the dough and dividing by 24 and then weighing enough for each portion.
The resultant biscuits(cookies) are very good indeed. They have that perfumed cardamom flavour, with just a little hint of lemon, as well as the lovely shortbread texture. They go very well indeed with a nice, strong, cup of tea.
Ingredients:
- 225g/8 oz butter, softened
- 150g/5½ oz caster sugar
- 1 lemon, zest only
- 250g/9 oz plain flour
- 100g/3½ oz ground almonds
- 3 tsp ground cardamom or 1 heaped tsp cardamom seeds, ground in a pestle and mortar
Method:
- Preheat the oven to 190C/375F/Gas 5. Line 2 large baking trays with baking parchment.
- Using an electric hand-whisk, beat the butter, sugar and lemon zest together in a large bowl until pale and fluffy.
- Beat in the flour, almonds and cardamom until the mixture is well combined and comes together to form a stiff dough.
- Roll the dough into 24 balls and place 12 on each baking tray – make sure you leave space between each one.
- Press each cookie with a cookie stamp or the bottom of a glass to flatten and leave decorative indentations in the dough.
- Bake a tray at a time for 12–14 minutes until the cookies are pale golden brown.
- Leave them to cool on the tray for a few minutes, then transfer to a wire rack. They will crisp up as they cool. Store the cookies in an airtight tin and eat within 7 days.