Cookery

I tried an experiment today.

We had got to the end of the biscuits, yet again, because they go so beautifully with a mid afternoon cup of chai tea. Also eating a biscuit is easier than cooking something when you are suddenly starving halfway through the dusting.

Biscuit making had become urgent, and I thought that this time I would have a go at a different way of making them.

Usually I make biscuits to the standard recipe of eight ounces of butter and four of sugar. 

Over the last few weeks I have been experimenting with eating less butter. This is partly because of Hard To Spell Disease, but mostly because I would like to be less portly whilst still eating the same amount of nice things. 

I have never been on a diet in my life, and have no intention of starting one now, but nevertheless think that it would be prudent to remain the sort of size where I only need to book one seat should I ever decide to go on an aeroplane. 

Also butter has gone up in price massively, making the cost of a hot melting sandwich roughly equivalent to a holiday in Portugal.

I thought that this would be terribly depressing, because I like butter and cream, and other similarly cellulite-creating foodstuffs. I have been greatly surprised by the unlikely discovery that actually, I like most of the alternatives rather better. I have made tomato bread and dipped it in sesame oil rather than putting butter on it, which is ace. I have made hummus and spread it on cheese sandwiches, I have used cholesterol-reducing paste in chocolate, and all sorts of similar innovations.

Today was another catering adventure along the same lines.

I had read on the mighty Internet that you could substitute either Greek yoghurt or cooking oil for butter if you are making biscuits, and so I thought I might give it a go.

I was suspicious of this advice. I have not trusted Internet recipes since the debacle with the fraudulent Scottish fudge, and so I read several online articles about it first, but they all said much the same. 

They were all American.

I find  American housewifery web pages to be mildly alarming. They are all inoffensively arranged in ladylike shades of beige with occasional pictures of leaves dotted around to reassure the reader that they are visiting a site that is holistically environmental, clean living and wholesome. The writers call themselves homesteaders, and refer to themselves as Mommy. Biscuits are called cookies, everything is measured in cups, and the spelling is horrifying.

None of this leads me to feel confident that I am dealing with an informed branch of civilisation. 

It must be a bit of an American thing. There doesn’t seem to be anything similar written by English housewives, we seem to leave that sort of domestic advice to the good old BBC, which obviously knows what it is talking about because they all went to Eton. We will not go into what I think of the ones written by our Scottish cousins.

I decided in the end that they could not all be barking, although I am still not certain of this, and that I would give it a go.

They were cherry and coconut biscuits. 

Instead of butter, I added six ounces of yoghurt and two ounces of groundnut oil. Nobody suggested mixing them, but I thought I might as well cover all of the bases.

It was troublingly splashy in the wonderful Kenwood, until I added the flour, and then it turned into a solidly lumpen mass in seconds.

I scraped it into a tray and flattened it, which took ages, and was an unusually sticky experience, and shoved it all in the oven.

Peculiarly, it didn’t all dissolve into a general flat biscuit shape the way the buttery stuff does, but retained its uneven shape so you could still see at which end of the tray I had started and whereabouts I had got to when I got bored. 

I poured chocolate over the top, which is a guaranteed way of making even the lowest-calorie biscuit acceptable, and put it in the fridge to cool. 

I cut them just before we came out to work.

They were less crumbly than proper biscuits, and they tasted absolutely brilliant.

Really, superbly good. The yoghurt gives them a whole different flavour.

I am beginning to enjoy this healthy eating very much. We thought that they were possibly the nicest biscuits we had ever made.

Hurrah for American Mommies.

For the interested, I have put the recipe on the Recipes page.

I made tomato swirl bread and chilli flavoured chocolate as well.

I will be thin in no time.