Eggy Biscuits

[karadekoolaid Profile]

As you all probably know, I cook spicy, salty, sharp, acidic, bitter, sweet ´n´ sour: but I don´t really cook sweet stuff. In fact, my enormous repertoire of sweet courses numbers about 5.
Anyway - you ´ave to givvit a go, right?
My son loves biscuits. I made some lemon bikkies about 6 months ago, and they went down a treat. Today I made some ginger biscuits - again, very yummy BUT the eggy taste was still there. The recipe was for 175 gms flour, 113 gms brown sugar, syrup... and 1 beaten egg. I used about half the beaten egg - and could still taste EGG in spite of the ginger, etc.
So how do I avoid the "eggy" aftertaste; do I cut out the egg altogether? Add salt? Oil? A couple of anchovies?
Any thoughts?

[Uschi Profile]

Try recipes without eggs ... I have some for sweet biscuits. Not too sweet actually.

Snowflakes

250 g unsalted butter
100 g icing sugar
1 vanilla pod
250 g cornstarch (any food starch will do)
100 g plain flour

Put softish butter into a mixing bowl, add icing sugar, the scraped out marrow of the vanilla pod, starch, and 1/3 of the flour and mix well with the mixer. Finally add the rest of the flour and knead well. Leave it in the fridge until cold.

Form tiny balls the size of small cherries and set them onto a baking tray with baking paper. Use a fork (dipped in flour from time to time) to flatten them a bit and give them a pattern.

Preheat oven and bake the snowflakes at 175°C for about 10 minutes (they burn easily, so check and take them out when they are still quite pale).
Then transfer them carefully to a cake grid and allow them to cool down.

They keep for weeks in a tin and actually get better having matured a bit.

(oh, they run a little, so leave some space between them. I'd say about as much as their own diameter before flattening)
............

Nut Slices

Dough:

250 g unsalted butter
250 g plain flour
100 g potato or cornstarch (any starch will do)
1 heaped teaspoon vanilla sugar (or enough vanilla essence for the amount)
1 level teaspoon baking powder
125 g ground hazelnuts,
1 pinch salt,

Garnish:
1 tblsp cocoa powder
3 tblsp sugar

Make the ingredients into a dough and form strands of 1 and a half inch thickness and roll these in a mix of the cocoa and sugar. (I make the strands thinner, about one inch thick)
Put into the fridge (separated by baking paper or clingfoil) for about an hour and then cut into half a centimeter thick slices. Bake for 10 minutes at 200°C (keep an eye on them, depending on the oven they can take more or less). They do spread a bit, like the snowflakes.

The strands will sometimes be too soft and the slices will not be round, in that case five minutes in the freezer will do the trick.

We adapted the recipe and used a small dollop of hazelnut couverture (white or milk chokolate will do just as well) and stuck half a walnut onto each biscuit after they had cooled off.
In a tin they will keep for weeks. Not only that, a little rest sees them beautifully matured and even better than fresh.

[jeral Profile]

I didn't think biscuits even had egg in them, unless the thick cookie-style ones maybe.

What about using a simple recipe that doesn't use egg, e.g. this BBC one:
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/173 ... ingersnaps
or Paul Hollywood's mum's recipe:
https://www.bbc.com/food/recipes/pauls_ ... nger_72428
A spot of lemon seems to balance well with ginger I reckon.

Mary Berry's ultra simple basic recipe could easily be adapted for vanilla, almond or lemon essence:
https://thehappyfoodie.co.uk/recipes/fork-biscuits

Good luck.

[Gillthepainter Profile Website]

Is this an American recipe approach?

I'd use egg if it said, in a cheese or savoury biscuit.
But sweet, I'd use butter - can you get butter?
Or just use the egg yolk if it is vital in there.

I'd bake more if I had someone who liked the results.

[Uschi Profile]

Over here most biscuits have eggs in them. Some just egg whites, others just yolks, others both. And most of the savoury biscuits seem to have some egg in them, too.
Personally I've not come across any biscuits that tasted eggy, but maybe my palate isn't inclined that way.

[Alexandria Profile]

Karakoolaide,

A possibility:

Did you use an electric mixer or did you combine the ingredients by hand in a bowl with a large spoon ?

I have read that it is best to use a mixer ( stand up stick shaped mixer or an electric mixer ) so that all ingredients are
thoroughly combined for cookies or cakes.


Have a nice weekend.

[Joanbunting Profile]

I mostly make shortbread type of biscuits both sweet and savoury. In French they are called sables and don't require any egg just butter. I have a good recope for peanut butter cookies. You make up the mixture, then roll it into a sauage shape and wrap it until it firms up. When you want to cook ityou just cut the roll into discs and bake.

I do a savoury version with grated Parmesan and either chopped black olives or piment d'Espalette - or both!

[jeral Profile]

I had a browse last night to see if I could find out why egg was put into biscuits and found a blog that'd done side-by-side tests at different temps.

The conclusion was that egg ones rose more at all temps but on taste the writer preferred the buttery taste without the egg interference.

Dunno if the above adds much, but does show that taste is affected in biscuits. I know I'm not alone in disliking Yorks Puds that include lots of eggs (unnecessarily IMO) because they're too eggy. My son never could stand the smell of eggs, e.g. fried or hard boiled, which is very pronounced, so maybe smell has something to do with it too.