A little bit of Heston - lemon cream biscuits

 

I decided to go all Heston Blumenthal experimental this evening.  From my disaster the other day I still had some lemon juice and the zest of one lemon to use up.  I thought I’d make some lemon biscuits.  Though having checked the recipe I was going to amend it only called for ½ tsp of liquid and I did not feel that was enough to flavour the biscuits to make them taste really lemony.  So my problem was how to get more lemon flavour into the biscuits.

I hunted round the internet and found nothing that was of any help.  So making a vain attempt to think logically about this I decided I needed a lemon concentrate.  But how could I make a concentrate?  I decided a concentrate was something that had the water taken out.  How could I do this to lemon juice?  By boiling it.

Makes about 70 individual biscuits or 35 if sandwiched together  

Equipment – Biscuit press

Ingredients:

1 lemon

8 oz butter soft butter

2 1/4 oz icing sugar

7 oz plain flour

2 ¼ oz cornflour

Filling:
3 tbsp cream cheese

8 oz icing sugar

1 – 2 tbsp Lemon curd

1 tbsp lemon juice

Temp 175 degrees C

Tips: 

• Put baking tray in fridge to cool before mix dough 
• Between batches wash and dry baking tray and place in freezer for about 5 minutes. 
• Any biscuits that do not press correctly pick up and add back into spare dough 
• After each loading of the press do a couple of practice presses straight into bowl with dough in and then scrap excess dough from bottom of press with spatula. 
• Recommended you watch a couple of the 'How to use a cookie press' videos on Youtube

Directions: 

Here’s the Heston bit………Home-made lemon concentrate

1. Zest the lemon and put the zest to one side
2. Cut the lemon in half and extract the juice.
3. Put 10 tsps of lemon juice into a small non-stick saucepan and bring to a fast boil.
4. Keep gently tilting the juice until you have about 1 tsp of liquid left – this will only take a minute or 2.
5. Remove from heat – keeping pan slightly tilted so all the juice goes down to one corner
6. Use silicone spatula to scrap all reside down to the juice.
7. Put the pan with the juice in to one side – keeping it tilted. 

Note: Do not be concerned if it is a sticky mess when you go to put it in the biscuits – all the lumps and stickiness disappear.

The biscuits

1.      Using electric hand held mixer cream butter until smooth and paler in colour. 

2.      Add sugar and lemon concentrate and mix until smooth. 

3.      Sift together flour and cornflour, add to mix and mix well. 

4.      Add lemon zest and combine again.

5.      Put some dough in biscuit press, choose design. 

6.      Press biscuits directly onto cooled baking tray. 

7.      Bake for 7-8 minutes. 

8.      Cool fully on cooling rack before putting the biscuits together. 

So, the biscuits have been cooked and cooled I have had a couple of cups of coffee to cleanse my palate from all the biscuit dough I ate.  I am ready to try a biscuit to see if my experimentation has worked.

I am very pleased they have a delightful fresh, but subtle lemony flavour.

So now what?  Well I still have the cream cheese left over from the other nights disaster.  Let’s experiment with the filling.

Filling

1. Add all the ingredients together and mix until smooth. 

Putting together.

1. Place half of the biscuits on a large tray upside down. 
2. Holding one of the biscuits upside down put on some of the filling repeat with all the biscuits on the tray.  Then sandwich all the biscuits together using the other half of the biscuits.

I tried them out on the food delivery van man to night.  I gave him one, which he promptly ate and asked for a couple more to take away with him.  So I say these are a success.