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Spiced Christmas Biscuits

These festive biscuits make the perfect homemade gift or can be left out for santa! Flavoured with black treacle, cinnamon and allspice gives these biscuits a rich, spiced flavour. This recipe was shared by Ink Sugar Spice blog.

Prep Time: 30 mins
Cooking Time: 20 mins
35 people

Ingredients

70g Classico Olive Oil
112g black treacle
2 teaspoons caraway seeds
345g plain flour, preferably tipo 00
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon allspice
1 teaspoon cocoa
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
80g soft brown sugar
1 medium – large egg
Zest of one orange
15-20ml milk
Icing sugar to decorate

Method

Warm your oven to 190° C fan / 210° C conventional or 400° F and set the shelves to the middle of your oven.
Prepare two baking sheets with greaseproof paper.
Weigh the black treacle and the olive oil both out into the saucepan and then add in the caraway seeds.
Warm the treacle and oil over a low heat, while stirring with a wooden spoon, until the treacle softens and you can stir the two together (they naturally do not want to combine until warmed). Do not turn the heat up or the treacle will bubble.
Once mixed, turn off the heat – do not keep on the heat longer than necessary.
Weigh out all the other ingredients into your mixing bowl: flour, baking powder, all three spices, cocoa, vanilla extract, orange zest, sugar and egg and roughly mix them together.
Using a sieve over the mixing bowl, pour out the oil and treacle mix so that the caraway seeds are captured in the sieve.
Mix all the ingredients together.
You may need a little extra milk if your ingredients feel powdery and are not coming together (this is normally due to a smaller size egg, but other things like lack of humidity in your kitchen etc can effect this). Add 15 ml of milk at first, and see if that is enough. Add a little more in small amounts until the mixture holds together well.
Take a walnut-sized amount of dough (if you wish to be more precise, 20g of dough is a perfect size) and roll it in your palms to make a rough ball.
Slightly squash the dough ball, so it becomes more disc-shaped and place on the baking tray. Repeat this process for the rest of the dough, placing about 1-2cm apart on the baking tray.
Bake in the middle of the oven for 12 minutes.
Transfer to wire racks to cool and dust with icing sugar when completely cooled.