Paul Hollywood's Mum's Ginger Biscuits

So the Great British Bake-Off started up again a few weeks ago and I have been looking forward to the new episode that gets released every Friday. I'm very glad that this season is better from a bakers and baking standpoint; last season I didn't feel connected to any of the bakers and if they got eliminated, I didn't really care. There's a couple this year that I am at least finding interesting. Anyway, that is my long-winded way of saying I felt compelled to look at Paul Hollywood's recipe books to find something to bake. This recipe is his mum's and it is super-simple. It also involves golden syrup, which I happened to have gotten a couple of months ago and forgotten about. Soooo...


Here's today's cast! Five ingredients for cookies--doesn't get much better than this!


Butter, sugar and syrup are melted together on medium heat. 


They melded nicely into a smooth and creamy mixture. I took the pot off of the heat and let it cool a bit.


I didn't have self-rising flour so I added baking powder and salt to all-purpose and whisked them together. Ground ginger was added to that.


The dry ingredients were added to the liquid and mixed well.


The resulting dough is smooth and a bit oily; it was very easy to handle.



Paul says the dough should be formed into balls about the size of a 50p. Uh, what's that in American, Paul? I did a scant-ish tablespoon. In my defense, I looked up 50p coins to get an idea of the scale.


The instructions say bake for 10-12 minutes, until golden brown. Mine took more like 15-16 minutes.


The texture is interesting--the bottoms and edges are crunchy but the top has a bit of a chew. It's a delicious combination of buttery and gingery.  I definitely need to double the recipe the next time!

Here's the promised recipe:

From Paul Hollywood's A Baker's Life



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