Tuesday"s Letters Eat 18: 'K' is for Kiss Biscuits

I don't normally repeat a recipe if I can help it, or remember, but K for Kiss Biscuits was just too hard to resist, and they are MrsDrWho's favourites. It was almost four years ago, so I'm giving myself a free pass.

This is my mum's recipe and before her, my nan's. The measurements were in ounces and pounds so I converted them to metric. I used a 6cm diameter cutter and made 45 complete biscuits.

If you don't like Hundreds and Thousands, you can use some toasted coconut instead. I also add lemon juice to the icing, but it can be plain vanilla. I used my mum's raspberry jam: 2011 batch. Traditionally the jam is raspberry or blackberry in our house, but never apricot.

Jammed Kiss Biscuits improve with keeping, but you can keep them iced and un-jammed in an airtight container for many weeks.

 Kiss Biscuits  makes 40-50

• 225g softened butter
• 225 caster sugar
• 1 tspn vanilla extract
• 1 egg
• 450g plain flour
• 1 tspn baking powder
• 1 tbspn (20ml) cornflour
• Hundreds and Thousands
• jam

For the icing

• 100g pure icing sugar, juice of half a lemon
• enough water to make an icing consistency

 

Cream the butter, sugar and vanilla until it is pale, light and fluffy. The sugar should be dissolved. Then add the egg and beat briefly but well.

Sift the flours and baking powder together. Add the flour to the creamed ingredients and mix to combine. It needs to be done thoroughly but gently, trying not to overwork. I usually bring it together at the end with my hands. (Clean) Form the dough into a round-ish shape, wrap in clingfilm and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Remove the dough from the fridge and then preheat the oven to 180*C. Line two trays with baking paper.

 Roll out a quarter of the dough between two pieces of baking paper or, bravely, on a floured board, to a thickness of about 3 mm. Using a 6cm diameter cutter dipped in flour, cut out biscuits and place on the tray. They can be quite close together as the biscuits really don't spread very much.

I re-roll the left over pastry with a new piece of cold dough and keep doing this until the very end.

Bake the biscuits for 12 minutes. The trays should be rotated and swapped after 6 minutes. If the biscuits are too thin they will brown. They should be a very pale, pale creamy colour.

Cool on a rack. When they are cool they are ready to be assembled.

Choose the second best biscuits and spread some jam on the 'bottom', so the public side is underneath.

To make the icing, sift the icing sugar and then add the lemon juice and enough water to make it an icing consistency. It needs to be runny enough to spread, but stiff enough so it stays on the top of the biscuit.

Put the hundreds and thousands in a bowl and then as each biscuit is iced, press it gently into them and push the icing into shape if it has oozed over the edge of the biscuit. Top the jammed biscuit with an iced one and you are done.

Kiss Biscuits!!!

Comments

[Monika]

As it happens I hate sprinkles, but I LOVE cookies filled with jam. I also like the cut out form you used here, so pretty! Although I would not eat anything with sprinkles, they are very eye catching, and gorgeous to look at.

[pixie]

yum yum yum

[Jan]

Very colourful, Cindy. I would leave them plain as I don't like sprinkles, either coloured or chocolate.

[RoseRed]

Oh, I don't remember you posting these before, so I'm glad you have shown us again. I imagine they are a great favourite with kids!

(and agree entirely that apricot jam simply Would Not Do!)

[jennifer]

so you say: "Jammed Kiss Biscuits improve with keeping, but you can keep them iced and un-jammed in an airtight container for many weeks."

haha the very notion of them being allowed to remain for weeks is quite amusing. xxx

[mrspao]

Yummy :)

[Judy-May]

Oh Yum! I'll ride over and we can have a little picnic! I love kiss biscuits!

[drkknits]

they remind me of something we used to have at parties, i cant quite put my finger on, some kind of marshmallow and jam thing. or else im imagining it. hundreds and thousands do have that effect!

[AmyP]

Who doesn't like hundreds and thousands? I mean ... brainmelt! Although dessicated coconut does make a lot of things better!

[Sasha]

Oh my goodness they look not only scrumptious but loads of fun too! I really must start adding your recipes to some sort of almanac so I can keep them for ever and ever!