SHREWSBERRY BISCUITS + Sugar-Free Berry Jam

Blackberry & Almond Shrewsberry Biscuits

Adapted recipe from the Almond & Jam Cookies in my book Feeding Little Tummies

Prep Time 20 minutes mins

Cook Time 15 minutes mins

Ingredients

• 100 g room-temperature butter [DF: use 100g coconut oil]
• 1/4 cup unrefined golden sugar
• 1 small-sized free-range egg at room temperature
• 1 tsp lemon zest
• 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 1 cup flour [GF: use 3/4 cup white rice flour + 1/4 cup tapioca/cornflour]
• 1 tsp baking powder
• Pinch of salt
• 1/2 cup ground almonds or the equivalent quantity of flour
• Berry Jam [see recipe above]

Instructions

• Preheat the oven to 180?C. Line a cookie tray with baking paper.
• Cream the butter and sugar with an electric mixer or food processor until fluffy and light. Add the egg, zest and vanilla, and mix for 1 minutes until creamy. Sift in the flour, baking powder and salt, then add the ground almonds and mix briefly to form a dough. Chill the dough for 20 minutes to firm up enough for rolling.
• Roll the dough between 2 pieces of baking paper to a thickness of 4mm. Use a 5mm cookie cutter to cut rounds from the dough. In half of the biscuit rounds use a 2cm cookie cutter [or bottle top as I did] to make the holes in the center. Re-roll any offcuts. Use a metal spatula to carefully arrange the rounds on the lined tray with space between each to allow for spreading. Bake for 12-15 minutes until lightly golden. Use a metal spatula to carefully move the cooked biscuits to a cooling rack [if using GF flour they may be a little crumbly so be gentle, they will firm up as they cool]. Once completely cool spread the jam onto the bottom biscuits and top each with a 'holey' biscuit for the jam to peep through.
• Store in an air-tight container and eat within 3 days.

Notes

Baking Tip: Make your own homemade + #glutenfree baking powder. In a jar combine 1 part baking soda [bicarbonate soda] + 1 part cream of tartar + 1 part cornflour/ tapioca [arrowroot]. Shake well.

Blackberry & Almond Shrewsberry Biscuits

Adapted recipe from the Almond & Jam Cookies in my book Feeding Little Tummies

Prep Time 20 minutes mins

Cook Time 15 minutes mins

Ingredients

• 100 g room-temperature butter [DF: use 100g coconut oil]
• 1/4 cup unrefined golden sugar
• 1 small-sized free-range egg at room temperature
• 1 tsp lemon zest
• 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 1 cup flour [GF: use 3/4 cup white rice flour + 1/4 cup tapioca/cornflour]
• 1 tsp baking powder
• Pinch of salt
• 1/2 cup ground almonds or the equivalent quantity of flour
• Berry Jam [see recipe above]

Instructions

• Preheat the oven to 180?C. Line a cookie tray with baking paper.
• Cream the butter and sugar with an electric mixer or food processor until fluffy and light. Add the egg, zest and vanilla, and mix for 1 minutes until creamy. Sift in the flour, baking powder and salt, then add the ground almonds and mix briefly to form a dough. Chill the dough for 20 minutes to firm up enough for rolling.
• Roll the dough between 2 pieces of baking paper to a thickness of 4mm. Use a 5mm cookie cutter to cut rounds from the dough. In half of the biscuit rounds use a 2cm cookie cutter [or bottle top as I did] to make the holes in the center. Re-roll any offcuts. Use a metal spatula to carefully arrange the rounds on the lined tray with space between each to allow for spreading. Bake for 12-15 minutes until lightly golden. Use a metal spatula to carefully move the cooked biscuits to a cooling rack [if using GF flour they may be a little crumbly so be gentle, they will firm up as they cool]. Once completely cool spread the jam onto the bottom biscuits and top each with a 'holey' biscuit for the jam to peep through.
• Store in an air-tight container and eat within 3 days.

Notes

Baking Tip: Make your own homemade + #glutenfree baking powder. In a jar combine 1 part baking soda [bicarbonate soda] + 1 part cream of tartar + 1 part cornflour/ tapioca [arrowroot]. Shake well.

There is a knack to picking blackberries. If you pick them too early they are insanely mouth-puckering tart. And if they are left too long they will fall off the vine with the slightest breeze. The key I find is to test the blackest of the berries by ever so gently rolling them between thumb and finger. If they roll into my hand they are ready. But be warned, if you get impatient and tug the berries from the vine, you will be mighty sorry you did.

Many of us are familiar with the prickly wild blackberry bushes. Many of us even gorged ourselves on said wild berries in our youth while enduring scratched hands and arms. We don’t have wild blackberries growing in our garden. When we first moved into our house I designated an area of the garden to be the ‘berry batch’ This is an area that gets wonderful summer sun but virtually no sun in winter so not much will grow there. From my year spent in Canada where the house I lived in was surrounded by 1 metre deep snow for the 3 months of winter I learned that berries can withstand the cold. I remember watching in spring as the snow around the raspberry canes thawed – at first the canes just looked like dead sticks poking out of the ground. However, within a few weeks the canes had buds on them that soon grew into leaves and by early summer we were picking an ice cream container full of berries every few days. Natures magic.

The plan for the ‘berry patch’ was to replicate this raspberry feast with many varieties of berries. I came across several ‘thorn-less’ blackberry vines at the farmers market and these became my first addition to the berry patch. Oh boy I tell you, that was a good decision. Within a year we were getting a small harvest off the vines, and now 6 years on our 5 metre-long trained vines provide us with approx. 8 kg blackberries each year. Nice One. So yes, I know a thing or two about harvesting blackberries. Each year from early Feb til mid March I head down to the ‘patch’ every few days with basket in hand to pick a small basketful.

In my opinion blackberries are way underrated. Over the years I have discovered they are kind of like the perfect berry, the birds don’t seem to eat them – maybe it is the black colour – while my pitiful raspberries are attacked if I don’t cover them. And the children have learned it is better to leave Mum to harvest the berries or they end up with puckered sour mouths.

Most years I freeze the excess to use in winter crumbles and blackberry pies. However this year being an exceptional fruit harvest for us we are well stocked so I have been experimenting with making sugar-free jam. This is my latest sugar-free jam result. It sets well as the dried dates thicken the jam as it cooks, and it is plenty sweet. I have also made a plum jam using apple syrup (apple juice boiled down to a syrup) with the same quantity of fruit and sweetener as below. The result was more a runny jam and less sweet. It reminded my German-born husband of his Grandma’s Pflaumen Mus (sour plum jam).

Save

Save