Listen up! Some of us are fed up with muffins, cookies, peanut biscuits, American coffees April 10, 2008

Ok, ironically, I have a muffin mix in my cupboard (ouch, slipping), but that was because a) sometimes I can be pretty lazy cook b) there’s wasn’t much of a selection of English cakes c) they’re easy to make

Confession over.

However, I am also sick to death of gateauxs, blueberry muffins and cookies and waffles. You can’t go anywhere in any English village or town without seeing some of these ‘evil alien species’. They have  a ‘grey squirrel factor’. It doesn’t exactly help our British business does it? How come Gordon Brown allows this stuff in.. surely they ought be taxed heftily?

In the future, maybe I shall make a more conscious effort to ‘boycott muffins’. 

Tonbridge Biscuits.. the story continues

Yesterday, I made some ‘proper’ Tonbridge Biscuits with plain flour, without any weirdy gluten free stuff. Well, it ended up a lot more tasty and I added heaps of sugar. You could really smell the homely buttery and herby caraway taste. Ironically caraway isn’t very British, maybe it is the Indian Empire connection? I really must learn more about the history of cooking.

I gave some to my colleagues and had a ‘thumbs up’. One of the more honest colleagues, said they were ‘jawbreakers’.. which is true! They were pretty hard… so any tips to make them less like ‘rocks’ would be helpful. Maybe I won’t cook them so long, the only thing with that, is that they won’t be so brown which I like.

I would show you a ‘plain flour’ version, but they’ve all been scoffed!

English Cooking April 8, 2008

I spoke to a person aged about 60 and another about 21 and talked to them about English Cooking. Naturally the older person said they ‘remember breadpudding’ but I was also surprised that the 21 year old loved breadpudding too. In fact his mother is a very good cook, so much so, he likes cooking now. You would think that all 21 year olds are brought up on burgers and takeaway chinese food, but not all of them.

It’s great to think that bread pud will survive into the next generation. It’s funny how you never see this being offered at restaurants and similar establishments. The Chain Restaurants may want us to scoff American burgers all the time, but some of us, brought up on English cooking, don’t want this. Something different, means perhaps English food! Even my boss who is Indian, wants to bring back English food! I am already given her some of my homemade ginger cake! I eat her curries but she eats my English food! She recognises that we need to bring our culture back, being Indian she needs her culture too.

English Baking: Tonbridge Biscuits

Makes 24

75 g (3 oz) butter, diced
225 g (8 oz) plain flour
75 g (3 oz) caster sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 egg white, beaten, to glaze
caraway seeds, for sprinkling

1. Rub the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs, then stir in the sugar. Add the egg and mix to a stiff paste and then the sugar (until it becomes more doughlike).

2. Roll out on a lightly floured surface, until about 0.5 cm (1/4 inch) thick, prick the top with a fork and cut into rounds with a 5 cm (2 inch) plain cutter. Brush with egg white and sprinkle on a few caraway seeds.

3. Put on to greased baking sheets and bake at 180°C (350°F) mark 4 for about 10 minutes or until light brown. Transfer to wire racks to cool.

Store in an airtight container.

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I looked at this recipe and decided there wasn’t really enough dough for 24!

So  I doubled the ingredients. For the flour I used a gluten free flour (as I was baking it for a friend). I think you need to add hell of a lot more sugar then the recipe says, so taste it and if it tastes very sweet, that’s perfect. I thought it was sweet enough at first but then after it was baked, I didn’t taste the sugar much.

When they were baked, I tasted them and they looked nice, though using gluten free, they are a little like ‘cardboard’! However, they were edible. I will definitely use plain flour next time as they will be more mouthwatering and ‘normal’.

The original recipe using the plain flour was made in the Pantiles, in Tunbridge Wells not Tonbridge. They used to sell the biscuits in a shop there but they died out as other biscuits came onto the scene. It’s sad they aren’t being sold anywhere in any local Kent shops. However, there was a recent newspaper article in the Kent & Sussex Courier mentioned local Tonbridge school starting to make them again. Apparently they ‘only just discovered them’, but the fact is they’ve been around for years, it is just that they died out. So next time you eat a Wagonwheel, just think of all our British biscuits dying out.