Baking Is Good For The Soul

Having some spare time on my hands and wanting to enjoy myself before Uni starts back up on Monday I thought to myself "Have a baking day".

So on goes the oven at 160 degrees Celsius and turn up some cheerful Christmas music. Yes, I know you might be thinking it is too early for Christmas music but I couldn't resist when baking Chocolate & Orange Biscuits. The scent of orange being grated reminds me of this magical time of year.

Basic ingredients (makes one log-20 biscuits): 100g soft unsalted butter, 50g caster sugar & 175g plain flour
~ Combine all ingredients till it forms a soft dough (may seem very dry/crumbly but it's meant to be). ~ Form the dough into a log shape- approx. 18cm, wrap in cling film and place in fridge till firm- around 2hours.
~Once firm slice into 5mm discs (you should get 20biscuits or so), place on a baking tray and bake at 160 Celsius for 15minutes.
 ~Remove from oven, cool completely before decorating!

Extra ingredients you could use to flavour the biscuits with: Orange zest, vanilla or almond essence, cocoa powder, lemon zest, fresh lavender or whatever takes your fancy.

Note: For making the chocolate biscuit you replace 10% of the flour with cocoa powder. In this case it would be 157.5g of flour & 17.5g of cocoa powder.

To decorate the orange flavoured biscuits: Melted dark chocolate to dip biscuits in & finish with candied orange peel.
To decorate the chocolate flavoured biscuits: Orange icing~ mix together 125g icing sugar and 3tbsp of orange juice till the mixture is smooth, place in a piping & decorate as you wish. To finish, sprinkle on chopped candied orange peel.

Note: Combine any flavours and edible decorations as you wish just make sure you use the exact basic ingredients/method. Have fun with it! ~Enjoy :)

Feel free to send feedback or any biscuit recipes with me...