Preserved Ginger and Oat Biscuits

These lovely biscuits were devised at a time, a few years ago, when Norwich City FC was causing me rather a lot of stress! As the English response to stress has always been to put the kettle on and make a fresh pot, we did just that. And what’s more, we made a little something rather special and comforting to go with it.

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Method

Start off by chopping four of the preserved ginger pieces into small dice.

Slice each of the remaining two pieces into eight thin rounds and leave these on one side.Next put the butter, sugar and preserved ginger syrup in a saucepan and leave it to dissolve over a gentle heat.

Meanwhile sift the flour and salt into a mixing bowl, add the porridge oats, diced ginger and ground ginger. Give it all a good stir to get everything properly amalgamated, then add the dissolved butter mixture, still stirring.

Then use your hands to bring it all together to form a dough.Now halve the dough and divide each half into eight lumps (about the size of a large walnut), and roll them into rounds with your hands. Place them on a worksurface and press down gently to flatten them into about 2½ inch rounds Then arrange all of them on a large baking tray, allowing room for them to expand during the baking. (If you are using two trays arrange eight on each and bake them one after the other.)

Press one slice of the reserved stem ginger on the top of each biscuit then pop the tray into the oven and bake on the centre shelf for 18 minutes.

When cooked leave them to cool on the tray for 10 minutes then transfer to a wire rack to finish cooling. If you have any left, they will stay crisp in a sealed container.