food hits and misses

I have a cookbook just for biscuits, but this week, I wanted to try something a little bit different, so hunted around a little before finding the easiest biscuit recipe ever.

2 cups butter

1 cup sugar

400g sweetened condensed milk (1 can)

5 cups self raising flour

Preheat oven to 190 Celsius. Cream the butter and sugar. Gradually beat in the sweetened condensed milk, then add the flour and mix to a stiff dough. Drop spoonfuls of mixture on to a lined baking sheet. Press with the back of a fork to flatten.  Cook for 15 - 20 minutes until golden. Cool on trays for 5 minutes before moving to a wire rack.

The recipe makes between 100 and 120 biscuits, so is just perfect for fetes or Christmas gifts, but gets a bit boring if you only make one flavour. I made the following four flavours from my dough, and got around 115 biscuits all up. 

Add 1 cup of cornflakes and 3/4 cup of dried cranberries to the mix. 

Add 1 cup of rolled oats, 1 cup of shredded coconut and 1 cup of chopped dried apricots.

Add 2 tablespoons of peanut butter and 3/4 cup chocolate chips to the mixture. Try to find peanut butter with no added salt or sugar. 

Split the remaining dough in half. Add a teaspoon of vanilla bean paste to half. Add a teaspoon of coffee essence to the remaining dough. Roll both pieces of dough into long rectangles, placing the coffee on top of the vanila. Starting from the long edge, roll into a fat sausage. Wrap in cling film or baking paper and allow to chill. Slice thinly then bake.