Lay the table » biscuits

Tea and biscuits ice cream

Becs — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 15:52:10 +0000

Tea, one of the best things to come out of Britain. A cup of tea is a remedy for almost anything – a bad day at work, splitting up with a boyfriend, being poorly. I’m also a big fan of elevenses, a sneaky biscuit (or three), dunking it in my tea and savouring the flavour.

When I saw Mowielicious’ magazine I finally got hold of his cornflake condensed milk ice cream recipe I’d be dying to try. It was absolutely divine, and the thing that I really enjoyed most was the malty flavour that had infused into the milk. I started thinking about malted milk biscuits…mmm malted milks. Tasty, apart from the 3 second dunking rule. Any longer than that and it ends up at the bottom of the cup and you inevitably forget about it and end up with grainy biscuit crumbs in your mouth as you drink the last dregs of tea. I wanted the malted milk softness and taste after it’s been dipped in tea, not as biscuity bites in the icecream. Could this be done? What the hell, I was up for an experiment anyway.

My first batch was a total disaster. Luckily I’d bought myself a double pack of malted milks! In the first batch, I warmed the milk, added the tea bags and the biscuits (a whole pack) straight away. It ended up as bit malty mess and the tea bags barely brewed the tea. I tried to strain it sans success and then ended up slopping it all over the kitchen floor. Clean up, wipe down, try again.

Luckily this time it worked! I left the tea bags in the warmed milk and just put 5 biscuits in once the tea had brewed and I strained it without problems. I love the flavour – you get a little tea aftertaste mixed with malty biscuit flavours. Of course, you could bits of malted milk if you wanted crunch, just leave it to freeze for 2 hours and then add crumbled biscuit. I of course used Yorkshire’s finest brew, Yorkshire Tea but you can use whatever brand of teabag you prefer!

This recipe is adapted from Mowielicious’ Cornflake ice recipe.

Ingredients

5 malted milk biscuits
4 tea bags
500ml milk
100ml condensed milk
300ml double cream
½tsp nutmeg

Instructions

Warm the milk in the pan but don’t boil, add the nutmeg and teabags and brew for 6 minutes (we want it to be almost stewed to give it the flavour). Then remove the tea bags.
Take the pan off the heat. Break the biscuits into a few pieces and add to the milk. Stir well until they’ve dissolved. Leave for 15 mins.
Strain through a muslin in a sieve into a bowl. Stir mixutre occasionally until nearly all the milk mixture has gone through. Leave the mixture to cool.
Mix the condensed milk and cream with the malty tea milk mixture until well mixed.
Place the mixture into your icecream maker and follow your icecream maker’s instructions (I put mine in for 30 minutes). Box and freezer for at least 4 hours. Stir after 2 hours.

The East India Company biscuits review

Becs — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 19:43:58 +0000

I was asked if I wanted to try some of The East India Fine Foods Company‘s stuff so they sent me some of their biscuits to review. They sent me some of their Cherry, Choc & Chilli biscuits to try and they arrived well packaged and in the gorgeous tin with gold embellishments. It’s one of those tins I usually buy and then give to other people as presents, but this time I got to keep it!

So, to the biscuit. It was delicious crumbly and initially I could only taste the chocolatey flavour, but suddenly there was an afterburn of chilli which numbed my mouth for a while afterwards. I handed some out to my office and had similar responses, however I gave the other half of the pack to my boyfriend, whose office absolutely loved them! Maybe they were a bit too spicy for me but if you love a bit of heat then these are the right biscuit for you.

A few days ago I received another pack of biscuits to try: Caramel & Sea Salt, much more up my sweet street! They arrived at work and we were feeling in need of a cup of tea and a biscuit so we obligingly partook. These biscuits are much more solid, quite good for dunking as they don’t dissolve and end up at the bottom of your cup (you know when you forget and you get the grainy biscuit dregs in your mouth, I hate that!). I loved the little bits of caramel in it and the biscuit with a gentle salty flavour afterwards. Really loved these ones, hence no pics, sorry I ate them all a bit hastily!

East India Company also sell loads of great other products like Hibiscus Cordial, Exotic Salts and premium teas and coffee. Go have a look at their site! http://www.theeastindiacompanyfinefood.com

Beautiful hand made biscuits

Becs — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 21:55:13 +0000

I’ve written previously about my adoration for Biscuiteers and wondered about how to make them myself. I guess I just lacked the enthusiasm to have a go myself.

Upon opening an email from Biscuiteers a while ago, I discovered they were, in fact, bringing out a book called Biscuiteers Book of Iced Biscuits! Oh the excitement! Another beautiful book to add to my overflowing bookshelf. I’ve been mega busy of late, but having had a spare day off after coming back from Edinburgh and having just bought a beautiful cupcake shaped cookie cutter from Peter Maturi (not available on their website) I decided it was high time I got my bake on and have a go at making some beautiful biscuits.

The book is extremely inspirational and gave me lots of ideas and plenty of tips on getting the best biscuit and how best to make royal icing and pipe it. I think my biscuits turned out pretty good for a first attempt! My piping skills are a little rusty since my sugarcraft course, not helped by the fact I ballsed up the piping bag by cutting too big a hole, but still for eager first try I think I did OK.

The entire process probably took about 3 hours to make 18 biscuits – the more colours you have the longer it’ll take to make up the different icings and pipe or fill all the different sections of the biscuits. It’s completely worth it though! These kinds of biscuits will make great gifts when you’re a bit broke – time and effort put in is always much more meaningful that the amount spent.

Whilst I doubt that the recipe for the Biscuits is actually the one they use (come on, they wouldn’t give away their real recipe) the biscuits were absolutely delicious even though I overcooked mine a bit due to a overly hot oven. The feedback from my colleagues was extremely encouraging although I’m not sure they are an entirely reliable source as they’ll eat anything being given away!

If you are interested in buying the Biscuiteers Book of Iced Biscuits, Amazon is the cheapest place to get it:

Review: Biscuiteers

Becs — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 15:00:32 +0000

Yummy yummy yummy it feels good in my tummy! That’s the only way I can describe these beautiful biscuits.

I’ve known about Biscuiteers for a while having learnt about them in various magazines articles and being naturally interested in such a specialist online business. I’d never bought a box because they’re more of a special treat that you buy someone else and I wasn’t sure they’d live up to their fame.

So when I got the email telling my I’d won a box from their newsletter competition, I jumped for joy! A couple of days later, the parcel arrived at work. My colleagues and I all admired the same level of quality in the presentation as we do for our products. The box was beautifully decorated with a a bakery motif, the inside wrapped with gorgeous bright pink wax paper. Each biscuit is “glued” onto the layer dividers with chocolate so they don’t break, ensuring they arrive in perfect condition.

It says a lot that I’ve got to this point and haven’t even told you what the contents were like. I will get to that now. The biscuits are hand iced and beautifully. The designs are inventive and there’s many different ranges to choose from. My set was a Wimbledon one, featuring tiny little tennis balls, racquets, shoes, sunglasses and a scoreboard to name but a few! The variety was amazing and there were actually 3 layers of biscuits in the box!

Now to the taste: As soon as crunched into one, I could taste the intense chocolatey taste I don’t think I’ve tasted in a biscuit for a long while (value Bourbons just don’t cut, and chocolate digestives don’t count because they’ve got a layer of chocolate on them) and they were lovely and crumbly to boot. I gave them a good dunking in my tea but didn’t manage to succeed in losing half my biscuit to the cup either.

Plus they use only natural ingredients so I felt slightly healthier indulging my sweet tooth.

Having tried these delectable delights I have no doubt that I’ll be buying them again as a present or you can subsitute them a card (they do a single one just for that!).

Prices are £37.50 for a box or £8.00 for a single one, but I absolutely promise you that you won’t be disappointed.

Yes, I definitely want some of those Biscuiteers biscuits »