For those of you who remain, I'm going to tell you something horrific: honeyjumbles don't actually have honey in them. I discovered this when making them this afternoon. Golden syrup is the only vaguely honey-like ingredient. As the name was obviously inaccurate, I felt well within my rights to rename the faux-jumbles. Searching for a name wasn't difficult; we didn't have any golden syrup so I substituted treacle and this gave the biscuit dough a deep brown colour. A rather specific brown colour.
Flatmate #1: Walks into the kitchen and upon seeing biscuit dough slows dramatically. Asks suspiciously.'What are you doing there?'
Me: 'Making biscuits.'
Flatmate # 1: With relief, laughing. 'Ha! That's good, I thought you were kneading poo.'
Flatmate #2: Enters kitchen. 'Woah - you realise that looks like shit?'
The recipe calls for the biscuit dough to be rolled into a log shape. Just like so:
Clearly the only name for these biscuits at this point in time was 'Pooh Sticks'. Rather appropriate as it references not only the appearance of the biscuits, but also a game invented by a silly old bear that most likely would have gruffled these biscuits (that's Winnie the Pooh, for those of you who have grown out of bedtime stories).
For those of you who just scoffed at the inclusion of a children's book character as an authority for how damn tasty these biscuits are, I'll have you know that grown men fought over these biscuits. In fact, you can see for yourself (or not see, depending on how good your night vision is, as this was shot in low light).
You will need...
- 125g butter, chopped
- 1 1/2 cups golden syrup (I used treacle...)
- 3 1/2 cups plain flour
- 2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 2 tbp fresh ginger, finely grated, or 3 tsp ground ginger
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp ground nutmeg
- 1 tsp ground cloves
- splash of milk (use as required)
- 1 egg white, beaten lightly
- 1 cup icing sugar
- 1 tbsp flour
- squeeze of lemon juice (to taste)
- couple of drops of food colouring of your choice
- optional - flavouring*
The how-to...
1. Combine butter and sugar in a saucepan and stir over low heat until the butter has melted. Once the butter has melted, continue stirring and bring the mixture to the boil. Remove saucepan from the heat and leave to cool for 10 minutes.
2. Sift in dry ingredients and mix to combine. Add a little splash of milk to help the process. Cover the mixture and leave it alone for two hours.
3. Preheat your oven to 160 degrees. Turn out mixture onto a lightly floured surface and knead. You want a smooth, well combined dough - if it is coming apart then add a couple of drops of milk to hold it all together and if it is too sticky add a little flour.
4. Shape the dough into a rough rectangle and cut into 8 equal pieces. Take one piece and roll it into a long thin tube shape. Cut this into six pieces, each approximately 5cm in length. Round the ends of each piece to make the biscuit shape (see first blog picture).
5. Line the biscuits up on a tray lined with baking paper, leaving a couple of centimetres between each biscuit so they can flatten out. Put in the oven for 12 minutes.
6. Whilst the biscuits are cooking, make up your icing. Combine the icing sugar, lemon juice, flour and egg white to make a thick icing paste. If you plan to add colouring/flavouring, divide up the mixture so that you can tint/flavour each portion differently.
7. Pull out the biscuits and let them cool on the tray. After 20 minutes, transfer them to a wire tray and ice them quickly before they are all eaten.
Makes 48.
*I'm always frustrated by coloured foods that taste nothing like the flavours that the pigment promises, so I've added a little vanilla to the white icing and rosewater to the pink icing. After some pestering from my flatmate about what colour the vanilla-flavoured icing should be - blue, according to him - I made some less traditionally coloured jumbles. The 'Science' jumble (green = peppermint) and the 'Malaria' jumble (yellow = brandy). So you can imagine how good this one tasted...
