A lovely light biscuit with delicate flavours which would be just as good served with a dessert like syllabub. (Anthropologie tea towel as background.)
Cardamom and orange bird biscuits iced in white chocolate
250 g plain flour
5-10 cardamom pods (seeds removed and crushed)
100 g icing sugar
150 g butter, diced
Freshly grated zest of an orange
2 teasp of freshly squeezed orange juice
large egg yolk
white chocolate to decorate
Heat the oven to 180°C/160°C for a fan oven/Gas Mark 4 and line 2 baking sheets with baking parchment.
Rub the butter into sifted flour until it looks like fine breadcrumbs. Then stir in icing sugar and crushed cardamom. Add the egg yolk and orange juice and mix until a dough forms. Gather this into a couple of balls, flatten these, cover in cling film and chill for about 20 minutes.
Remove from fridge, place each flattened disc of dough between 2 pieces of baking parchment and roll until the required thickness, using a light dusting of flour if needed. Cut out with bird cutter and place on baking sheet about 2cm apart.
Bake for 7-8 minutes until the biscuits are just beginning to go golden. Remove from the oven and let them cool on the baking tray before transferring to a wire rack to complete the process.
When sufficiently cool, ice creatively, either using a commercially bought tube of icing or, if none to be had, melt 100g of white chocolate in a pan over hot water and pour into an icing bag with small nozzle (kneading with you hands to keep the chocolate warm enough to flow as the icing progresses). The white chocolate sets quite quickly and is firm enough to pack into a tin to take to church the next morning.
Cardamom and orange bird biscuits iced in white chocolate
8 Comments
Mouth watering just from reading the recipe…!
I’m not sure I would bother to read a recipe that I wasn’t going to make – what an impressive blog reader you are Rachel – and I am very grateful for your interest and comments.
Hello Mary – Delicious biscuits and yet another stunning tea towel!
Yes, it is a lovely tea towel – and far too nice to contemplate wiping dirty dishes with!
Your parishioners are extremely lucky to be the regular recipients of such beautiful looking as well as tasty biscuits, Mary. I know from experience that the start-to-finish process of producing cutter shaped iced biscuits (like your lovely alphabet biscuits) is very time-consuming although so rewarding when each one is admired albeit it briefly!
Well I think I’m lucky too to have parishioners – I would never dare to make 40 biscuits a week if I hadn’t got someone else to eat them.
Thank you for empathy over the frustration of interesting but perhaps overly intricate biscuit cutters – knowing this why do I still find it hard to resist a good looking cutter?
These are so pretty! I am not good at placement with wings, eyes etc, any animals/birds etc I try to draw, or ice, tend to have a sinister rather than inviting air! X
Oh I think you could do it with some of the ready made tubes I’ve been using recently. I suspect they’re not great quality chocolate although the white ones taste pretty good. Will reveal all and photograph them soon.