beautiful again: Morning biscuits

or cakes, or cookies, or fruit parcels. Whichever you prefer!

Welcome to my first recipe post!

The idea behind this baking session was to attempt to imitate some biscuit type/cereal bar things we had from Sainsbury's that I really like. I'm keen to get away from all the artificial ingredients that are in cereal bars, and stick to a few natural ones instead. I hate it when seemingly ok products have an ingredients list the size of my hand (in tiny writing). I'm trying hard to introduce some healthy snacks into my diet, and this was an attempt at the first step. Ok, I didn't end up with anything close to cereal bars, but the result is deliciously fruity, and not too sweet.

I adapted an old Icelandic recipe for these, and decided that I'd do half cinnamon swirl biscuits, and half raisin/apple slices. Since the recipe is in Icelandic, I thought I'd translate it for you! The raisin/apple filling for half of the biscuits is completely improvised, I made it up as I went along with no recipe input at all.

Here goes! Feel free to comment below and ask questions if anything isn't clear.

Ingredients

Pastry:

250g plain flour

50g cold butter (I used salted, but maybe unsalted would be better), cut into cubes

2 tsp sugar

2 tsp baking powder

1 egg

100ml milk

Cinnamon swirl filling:

25g melted butter

2 tbsp sugar

1 tsp    ground cinnamon

Raisin and apple filling:

2         granny smith apples (or other crunchy, tart apples), cut into small pieces
25g     butter
25g   raisins or sultanas
1 tsp ground cinnamon (or less, if you prefer - personally, I can't get enough of it)
2 tsp sugar

Method

1. Mix the flour, baking powder and sugar together in a bowl

2. Cut the cold butter into cubes, and add to the bowl

3. Rub the butter into the flour with your fingertips, until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs.

4. Add the egg, combine, and then slowly add the milk to the mix. Knead the dough until it has a smooth playdough-like consistency. You might need to add a sprinkling of flour here and there if the dough is too sticky.

Cut the dough in half, wrap each half in clingfilm and set aside to cool in the fridge. This pastry can be used to make both types of biscuits in the photo above.

*At this point, my camera ran out of battery, so the rest of the photos are taken with my phone. Excuse any reduction in quality :)

For the cinnamon swirls:

1. First, mix the cinnamon (1 tsp) and the sugar (2 tbsp) in a small bowl.

2. Take one half of the dough out of the fridge and roll it into a rectangle shape. You want it to be quite thin, about 2-3mm.

3. Melt 25g butter in a saucepan, and brush it all over the flat dough (I only used about half of my melted butter)

4. Next, take your bowl of cinnamon-sugar and evenly sprinkle all of it onto your rectangle. The butter will make it stick.

5. Roll your dough *lengthways* into a long sausage shape.

6. Cut your sausage shape into pieces, about 1.5cm (approx 1/2 inch) across.

7. Take each piece and lay it flat side down onto a greased baking sheet (baking parchment is fine too). Slightly flatten each swirl with your fingers.

8. Bake in a preheated oven at 200 C (400F, gas mark 6) for 15-20 minutes, or until the swirls are light golden brown.

Onto my improvised raisin and apple filling!

For the raisin and apple filling:

A reminder of the ingredients:

2         granny smith apples (or other crunchy, tart apples), cut into small pieces
25g     butter
25g   raisins or sultanas
1 tsp ground cinnamon (or less, if you prefer - personally, I can't get enough of it)
2 tsp sugar

1. Cut your apples into small pieces. You could use cooking apples (bramley) for this recipe, but you would need more sugar.

2. Melt the butter in a saucepan on a low-medium heat

3. Add your apple pieces, raisins/sultanas, ground cinnamon and sugar. Cook it on a low-medium heat for about 15 minutes, until the apples are soft, and *I think* have caramelised. I have never been shown what caramelising looks like, so I'm guessing here. But it goes kinda gooey. Make sure to do this slowly. Hence the 15 minute cooking time.

4. This is what it should look like, roughly, when you've cooked it enough. See the glistening, gooey, yumminess?

My flash went off and I couldn't avoid it. Phone's fault :P

5. Go get the other half of your dough, and roll it out into a rectangle. I failed at rolling rectangles today, so I just cut off the wonky sides to get a nice rectangle shape (of course saving the cut off for some odd-shaped parcels at the end!). Then I cut the big rectangle into 5 smaller rectangles.

6. Get your mix, and put about 2-3 teaspoons of it on each rectangle, as shown. Make sure you leave enough space to fold the rectangle in half.

7. Fold each rectangle in half towards you, and with a fork, press down on both layers together at the edges, to close the pastry. Go all the way round so all the yummy mix is cosy inside!

8. Once you've closed all the parcels, score the top with a knife, I would say until you see the mix. Don't make the slits too big or you'll get mix everywhere when it cooks. I didn't score mine enough and some of my parcels ended up opening at the sides. If you leave a small slit open in the top, the bubbles have somewhere to go and that means your parcel stays closed!

9. Finally, brush the tops of the parcels with some milk, so they go nice and golden in the oven!

10. Bake at 200 C (400F, Gas mark 6) for 15 minutes, or until golden. This is what they should look like:

Finally, leave them to cool for a few minutes, and open them up to see all the yummy filling! And then gobble it up!