Not a Success but Not a Failure: Sour Cherry Cardamom Biscuits

It all started when the shop in the basement of my office building started selling individual slices of McVitie's Genoa Cake. Those slices of yellow cake riddled with glace cherries and raisins, sent me straight back to the fake wood panel sliding door of my Grandma Mary's biscuit cupboard. Inside biscuits were kept wrapped up with parchment and elastic bands, nestled in tupperware and tins. This (mysterious) lack of original packaging meant that opening one of these boxes was always a surprise. And more often than not, I wanted them to contain Garibaldi biscuits. Although I definitely didn't call them that. I probably called them "the cookies with the raisins in them" not even realizing that they were currants. That's because I was an ignorant child of the colonies. I was not educated in the multitude of ways that dried fruit can be incorporated into biscuits and cakes, an impulse that is so, so British. My grandmother was never a great cooking enthusiast, but she was a keen baker and when her arthritis made that too difficult, she kept a very sound collection of very British biscuits. It was one of the ways she seemed to harken back to her early years in Scotland. A rejection of Fudgee-Os and  love of candied ginger and mixed peel.

I'm not sure she ever actually had Genoa cake, but that's not the point. The cake was just a trigger for the Garibaldi biscuits, a treat that it more about texture and sound than anything else. They come in strips that you have to satisfyingly snap apart. The cookie itself is basically a matzoh with currants squashed in the middle that are guaranteed to get stuck in your teeth; a deliriously banal mix of crisp and chewy. Totally boring and totally one of my favourites. Wikipedia says that they were named after and Italian general who sat on an eccles cake on an official trip to Wales. Sounds good. Let's believe them. 

I wanted to make them, but to tart them up a bit with dried sour cherries instead of currants and a bit of cardamom in the dough. Grandma would not have approved; but we're going to have to differ here. The problem came in finding a base recipe to have my way with. No one wants to make Garibaldi biscuits at home because you can buy them in the shops for 74p.  Accordingly, there aren't very many recipes for Garibaldi biscuits online, but I found one from Marcus Wareing and I wanted it to work. As he is reputable and unbelievably cocky on tv, I thought he would provide me with the answer. Not so much. The first annoying thing about this recipe is that all measurements are by weight. That's fine for flour, butter and sugar, but irritating when it comes to egg whites. The ratios also seemed to be a bit funny. Originally, you were supposed to use 200 g of currants. That's half a pound and twice as much as any other ingredient. I used less than half that amount of fruit and it was gloriously ample. Also, after mixing the butter, flour and sugar, my dough was quite soft and turned almost to batter with the addition of an egg white. I stopped at one egg and added more flour, but the consistency was very different from the description in the recipe.

I knew when I was making the dough that it wouldn't make a Garibaldi biscuit, not the crisp and pale treat that i wanted. It was too enriched, too buttery. It was more like a shortbread. But since the dough was made, it would have been stupid not to proceed. Besides, Once the cherries were swaddled into the soft dough and everything was rolled smooth, cut, pricked and baked, the biscuits were delicious. No, they were not Garibaldis. There was way too much crumble and not enough of a cracker crunch. But the flavour combination was lovely and there's something about a long, thin cookie that's perfect with tea. Lots of dunking potential. 

It's actually almost time for an evening cup of tea now. Off to the pantry to raid one of my tins...

Cherry Cardamom Not-Garibaldi Biscuits

Adapted from Marcus Wareing

Makes approximately 6-7 long thin biscuits

Ingredients

100g butter

100g icing sugar

130g flour

1 separated egg

75g chopped dried sour cherries

3-4 pods cardamom, seeds removed from pods and crushed (I used the butt of my knife)

Method

1) Melt the butter in a large bowl

2) Add the flour and sugar and mix until smooth. Add one egg white and save the yolk.

3) Fold in the chopped cherries and the ground cardamom and form the dough into a ball.

4) Chill in the fridge for an hour and preheat your oven to 350/180.

5) Roll out the dough on a floured surface, shaping it into a rectangle. Cut the dough in strips and then brush with the reserved egg yolk and sprinkle with demerara sugar.

6) Bake for about 10 minutes until golden.

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