Sunday, July 25, 2010

Strawberry Biscuits

 love strawberries. Most of what we get here that is affordable is shipped in from California. The sweeter, smaller, redder locally grown berries are an astronomical price.

I did grow a few strawberries myself this year. The operative word is few.  Though they looked good, there were barely enough for a taste. I think I might try growing more strawberries next year as I really like strawberry preserves and fresh or frozen strawberries to use as dessert.

My blogging friend Lynda in Tanzania, East Africa, loves strawberries too  The other day she shared a delicious recipe at her blog for strawberry cookies. I would never think to put strawberries into a cookie myself so I promptly decided to try the recipe out.  Here are my photos of the cookie making process (not every step.  Please click on photos to enlarge.) The recipe follows.

Creaming the butter.
The beaten egg, milk and brown sugar have been added.

Last step is add the wonderful strawberry.

The finished product. Yum!


Now here is Lynda's recipe.

Strawberry Biscuits (Cookies) (Adapted from the ‘Sugar Biscuits’ recipe in ‘Cook and Enjoy It’ by S.J.A. de Villiers)
½ cup Butter
1 cup brown Sugar
1 Egg, beaten
2 tbsp Milk
1 tsp Vanilla Essence
½ tsp Salt
2 ½ cups Flour
2 tsp Baking Powder 

 1 cup fresh Strawberries, cleaned & roughly chopped

Cream the butter & sugar together until light and fluffy. Add the beaten egg, milk, vanilla essence & salt. Mix well. Sift the flour and baking powder in. Mix. Fold in the chopped strawberries. Knead the dough lightly and roll pieces into walnut sized balls. Place on a lightly greased baking sheet, press each ball down lightly with your thumb to flatten. Bake at 190’C/375’F/Gas Mark 5 for around 12 - 15 minutes until done. Makes +- 35 biscuits. 


My tips:


You should measure more carefully than I did. I think I put too much flour in my mixture as I was trying to hurry. My dough ended up being quite dry so I added several spoons of milk. It was still dry so I used my hands to hold the batter together into balls (thereby melting the butter and helping to form the dough balls). 


Also I did not get 35 cookies. I got 15 so I made my cookies on the large side. If you want more cookies, naturally you must watch the size.


The cookies were absolutely delicious! I will most definitely be making them again as I always have strawberries on hand. You can check out more recipes at Lynda's blog and also learn fascinating things about life in Tanzania. Bon appetit!

6 comments:

Diary From Africa said...

I am so glad that you made these and that they turned out so well for you ! (The balls I rolled were a little bigger than a marble which is how I managed to get 35). Your menu for your West African friend sounds lovely. Chicken is a great meat option, too as it is very popular here & everything else sounds delicious, too. (P.S. What about your East African friend ? Can I come too ?!)

Joyful said...

Lynda, thanks for stopping by to see my cookies. I'm so glad you posted the recipe for these as they are unique and so delicious!

Thank you too for your input in my menu. I want my friend to be able to enjoy and actually eat the food since I cannot make fufu which is an entirely different consistency to ugali. (You can come on over too. Can you get here by Wednesday?, lol).

Joyful said...

They were indeed "YUM". lol

Joyful said...

YUM!

misskate2015 said...

In the recipe it has baking soda in parenthesis next to the baking powder - is it either or?

Joyful said...

Hello Misskate, I don't recall anymore and Linda no longer publishes her blog. I've looked up similar recipes and they call for baking powder so I would go with that. Good luck with these. I remember them being very tasty!

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