Citrus and spiced orange cardamom biscuits
Cardamom lovers in the house? It is baking unusual in this place.
Let me introduce you to my current favourite biscuits and my mama’s secret addiction: orange cardamom biscuits.
Love cardamom, love dunking? This is for you. Perfect for dunking or preferably sipping with tea.
Let’s discuss orange and cardamom biscuits. You need to bake these. You will need the usual margarine or butter, sugar, flour, egg and the game changers oranges and cardamom. The queens of my kitchen currently.
We start with blending sugar with cardamom and orange zest to infuse the oils to make the the flavour pronounce during and after baking. We do not want hints of oranges, or hints of cardamom but real citrus spiced biscuits.After inhaling enough cardamom and oranges, we mix the citrus spiced sugar with margarine or butter, add in the egg, the flour and salt. You will chill it for a while, roll it out, cut into shapes and well, bake.
On to icing. The icing is made with icing sugar, orange juice and orange zest. You can scatter it all over the biscuits or do that zigzag design I love. My decorating skills aren’t horrible occch….
- 1/3 cup/ 67g fine sugar
- 1 ½ teaspoon orange zest
- 1 teaspoon ground cardamom
- 1/2 cup/ 113g margarine or butter
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract/ essence
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 ¾ cup/ 210g pastry/ all purpose flour
- pinch of salt
- 1/2 cup/ 70g icing sugar
- 1 teaspoon orange juice
- a pinch of orange zest
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In the bowl of a stand mixer or large mixing bowl, rub orange zest, ground cardamom and sugar together with the back of a spoon so the oils get into the sugar and you can smell the orange and cardamom.
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Add the butter or margarine and mix until combined using a wooden ladle or mixer. Mix in egg yolk and vanilla essence.
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Add the flour and salt then mix to form a smooth dough. Do not over-mix. Shape the dough into a disk and chill in the refrigerator for 30 minutes to an hour.
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Preheat an oven to 180˚C/ 350˚F. Roll the dough to a thickness of 3/8-inch, between two sheets of parchment or baking paper.
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Cut shapes using a cookie or biscuits cutter. Bake on baking sheets lined with baking or parchment paper for 12 to 15 minutes, or until the cookies look dry on the surface, and feel firm around the edges and golden. Allow biscuits to cool on the baking sheet for a minute and transfer to the wire rack to cool completely.
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To make the icing: combine icing sugar, orange juice and zest together. Whisk thoroughly till blended. Pour icing into a piping bag and seal the oven end. Thinly cut the closed end and squeeze over biscuits in a zip-zag fashion.
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Biscuits not frosted can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for seven days and unbaked cookie or biscuits dough can be kept in the freezer for three months.
Make your own caster or fine sugar by pulsing granulated sugar in a blender until the texture is fine.
