Lemon Poppyseed Biscuits

While black poppyseeds are a visual feast, they can be more expensive to buy than a mixture. These lemon poppyseed biscuits use white and black seeds but taste just the same.

Sundays in our house are normally reserved for cleaning, batch cooking and baking.  When hubby isn’t working he’ll happily distract the children for a couple of hours in exchange for baked treats.

Last weekend I picked up some silicone teacups which are designed for baking and serving cupcakes without turning them out.  They are cute, but I’m not a fan of baking with silicone as I find it imparts a slight texture to cakes that I’m not a fan of. Also who on earth had the idea of baking with white silicone? No sooner than you would put a cake mixture into the oven in these cases and they would be stained. A twitter follower suggested that jelly would look great inside instead and they were right.  I made a quick jelly by dissolving my raspberry jelly in half the amount of water I would normally use and then pouring it over my trusty frozen fruit stash (which is nearly all gone at this stage).  The jelly sets within 20 minutes at room temperature.

Still like I say, Sundays are baking days and jelly does need something crunchy like lemon poppyseed biscuits to temper the squishy wobbly goodness. You can of course buy black poppyseeds, they do look fantastic in these biscuits.  However they are more expensive to buy than a mixed bag of poppyseeds.  There is no flavour difference between black and white poppyseeds so you are gaining a little saving by making the biscuits with mixed seeds instead.

Here I use slightly less butter than usual as the poppyseeds contain a natural oil which is released in the baking process. This recipe makes 20 small, thin biscuits which will keep for up to 5 days in a cool dry jar.  You can also freeze this dough and bake it at a later date, this option keeps for up to 6 weeks in the freezer.

Ingredients

• 90g of caster sugar
• 85g of butter, softened
• 1 medium egg
• 150g plain flour
• 25g poppyseeds
• 1 teaspoon of baking powder
• grated rind of 1 fresh lemon

Method

In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Then add the egg and beat until mixed in completely. Finally add the flour, poppyseeds, baking powder and grated lemon rind. Beat well until you get a thick paste or dough.

Scoop the dough out the bowl and into clingfilm. Wrap tightly and put in the fridge for at least 1 hour.

After 1 hour, preheat your (fan) oven to 200 degrees. Line a baking tray with greaseproof baking paper.  Remove the dough from the fridge and roll on a well dusted (with plain flour) surface to about 5mm thickness.  Cut the dough with your cutters of choice and place onto your baking tray. Sprinkle the top of the raw dough with extra poppyseeds for decoration.

Bake in the oven for 7 minutes or until golden brown.  Once baked remove the tray from the oven and don’t move the biscuits for 10 minutes. Then lift with a spatula and leave to cool on a rack.

Serve with fruit jelly (as pictured) or just eat on their own.