There’s a long tradition of eating spiced biscuits with currants and a sugar topping at Easter. I’m not sure there’s a traditional Easter biscuit recipe anymore. Each recipe has its own twist – I like to add some lemon juice and zest for a light zing.
Traditional Easter Biscuits
There are so many lovely traditional Easter biscuits and cakes but, once my children were old enough to eat them, I stopped making most of them because they don’t like dried fruit. Chocolate and mini eggs took over as the basis for most of the baking I did at this time of year.
It’s funny how you can almost forget that other things exist – I had to trawl through my cookery books to remind myself of what I used to cook. Those recipes are always easy to find because the pages are well used and often have pencilled notes, not always legible. Now I find I have to translate the recipes into metric measurements that make sense and oven temperatures that work in a fan oven. In many ways, a blog is the perfect place to document the recipes I use most. It’s certainly easier than the recipe book I used to use!
It’s been so long since I made these biscuits that I had to have a couple of attempts at them. You have to take the biscuits out when they’re partially cooked to add the egg white and sugar topping. The first lot I made late one evening – always a mistake – and I brushed the egg white too thickly over the top so that the sugar clumped a bit. They tasted good, but look a bit uneven.
I wanted to make sure that they could look better so I made them again, in the afternoon, paying much more attention to how I finished them.
The point is to brush the egg white very thinly over the biscuits and do one at a time – egg white then sugar.
I also made some the second time without the sugar topping. The biscuits on the left don’t have any topping – they still look okay but not quite as special. One thing that most of the recipes I’ve seen have in common is the topping, so I stick with it.
I shan’t be offering these to my children, although my stepchildren might appreciate them, but they’re all looking forward to a chocolate Easter cake with mini eggs.
If you like this…
…Why don’t you try:
Traditional Easter Biscuits
Ingredients
For the biscuits:
- 100 g butter
- 90 g caster sugar
- 200 g plain/all-purpose flour
- 1/2 teaspoon mixed spice (2.5ml)
- 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg (2.5ml)
- 1/2 lemon, juice and grated zest
- 1 large egg yolk
- 75 g currants
For the topping:
- 1 egg white
- Caster sugar
Equipment
Instructions
PREPARATION:
- Set the oven to 180°C/ 160°C fan/ gas mark 4/ 350°F
- Grease the baking trays if you aren’t using a liner
- Grate the lemon rind. Juice the lemon
For the biscuits:
- Put all the ingredients for the biscuits, apart from the currants, in the bowl of your mixer or processor and mix well to combine.(Butter, sugar, flour, spices, lemon zest and juice, egg yolk)
- Scrape down and mix again.You will have a ball of dough of a soft consistency
- Add the currants and mix in by hand
- Gather the dough into a ball and squish onto your rolling surface.If you're using a magic liner or silicone sheet you don't need to dust with flour. Otherwise, you do
- Roll the dough to about 1/2cm thick and cut out rounds with the cutter, transferring to the prepared baking sheet. Gather the dough together and roll and cut again until it's all used up.The dough is quite resilient and doesn't mind a few rollings out
- Gather the dough together and roll and cut again until it's all used up.The dough is quite resilient and doesn't mind a few rollings out
- Bake for about 10-12 minutes
- Remove from the oven and brush each biscuit, very lightly, with the lightly beaten egg white
- Sprinkle with a little caster sugar and return to the oven for 4-5 minutes or until pale golden brown.For best results do one biscuit at a time, i.e. egg white and sugar
- Cool on the tray for 5-10 minutes then lift onto a wire rack until completely cool
