July 2019 - tastebotanical

Home-made Cheese Biscuits with Chilli

These Cheese Biscuits with Chilli are a heated-up version of a basic cheese biscuit recipe. They are fantastic as a snack with drinks as they are deliciously cheesy and pack a big load of chilli heat. I think they go particularly well with a beer!

I have been making the basic biscuits for years and if you are not a lover of spicy food, you can leave out the chilli. If you are serving them with wine, the non-spicy version might be better. Or you could do a batch and put chilli in one half.

I have a taste for savoury, salty snacks, which I try to moderate generally and indulge occasionally. One of the good things about making your own snacks is that you are in control of the salt levels. Adding strong flavour elements, such as chilli, also helps with this as it means that the snacks have a powerful hit of flavour without being overly salty.

Whether you are looking for a plate of snacks ready for a box-set binge evening or for a drinks party, these Cheese Biscuits with Chilli are fantastic. They will keep in a sealed tin for several days once baked. Even better, you can keep the dough in the refridgerator for a week and slice and cook the biscuits when you want to eat them. You can also freeze the dough for several months. I always prepare a large batch of cheese biscuit dough in the run-up to Christmas and refridgerate or freeze which means that I can have freshly baked home-made biscuits within minutes.

If you are in a snacking mood, you might also like to try my recipes for Spiced Nuts and Marinated Feta. Both are really easy and are great at a party or if you are just watching television with a cold beer!

Cheese Biscuits

Author: Tastebotanical
Prep Time: 10
Cook Time: 10
Total Time: 20 plus 60 minutes rest time
Yield: Around 30 biscuits 1x
Category: Biscuits
Method: Baking
Cuisine: English

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Description

Whether you make these Cheese Biscuits with or without chilli, they are a fantastic snack with drinks or for a box-set binge. The dough can be kept in the fridge or freezer and baked whenever you feel like fresh home-made biscuits.

Ingredients

Scale

100 g butter (at room temperature)
100 g strong cheese (eg Cheddar)
100 g plain flour
1 teaspoon chilli flakes

Instructions

Put all the ingredients into a food processor and blend until combined to form a dough.
Roll the dough into a sausage shape, wrap in cling film and place in the fridge to chill for an hour.
Set your oven to 180 degrees C or Gas Mark 4.
Remove the dough from the fridge and cut across to form disks approximately 1 cm thick.
Place the disks on a greased baking tray and bake in the oven for 10 minutes until golden.
Remove from the oven and place the biscuits on a baking rack to cool.

Notes

If you don’t like chilli, you can leave it out. The plain, cheese biscuits are delicious too!
The baked biscuits will keep for several days in an air-tight tin.
The dough can be kept in the fridge for a week. So that you can cut it into discs and bake for home-made biscuits within minutes.
The dough can also be frozen for several months.

Keywords: biscuits, cookies, savoury biscuits, chilli, cheese biscuits

Easy Lavender Loaf Cake

Just the name, Lavender Cake, makes me think about an English summer garden. I love the calming floral fragrance of fresh lavender, which is held in both the flowers and the leaves. I also think it looks beautiful with green-grey leaves and deep blue, purple or white flowers.

If you grow lavender in your garden, this is a cake to make in high summer, late June through to August when it is at its best. Make sure that it hasn’t been treated with any pesticides or other chemicals before you use it in your cooking! If you don’t grow your own lavender, you can use culinary lavender which is available from some supermarkets and also online.

Like many of the cakes that I make, this Lavender Cake is a variation on a simple loaf cake recipe. Lavender and lemon has become a popular flavour combination in cakes and desserts. For this recipe, I combined lavender with orange, which adds a similar zesty citrus flavour. It occurred to me when I had made this cake that lavender and orange are both included in the classic Herbes de Provence herb mix from the South of France which is used in savoury dishes.

So many lavender recipes….

I use lavender mainly in sweet recipes. I make Lavender Ice Cream, which is creamy and floral and fantastic at the end of a summer dinner party. If you want to give someone a summer treat, you could do worse than make them a lavender-themed Afternoon Tea with Lavender Shortbread Biscuits and Lavender Scones. I sometimes make a Honey Cream Tea, combining Cream and Honey with the Lavender Scones, which is a great twist on an English teatime tradition. If you have a lot of fresh lavender in your garden, you can capture the flavour by making Lavender Sugar which you can use as a baking ingredient.

….and so many cake recipes!

If you like this cake, you may like some of the other loaf cake recipes that I cook regularly. They are so quick and easy to make and you can get really creative with the flavours! On other pages of this blog you can find recipes for Rosemary Cake, Thyme Cake, Earl Grey and Orange Cake,Lemon Drizzle, Blood Orange, Lime and Coconut, Rum and Banana and Ginger and Pear.

Lavender Cake

★★★★ 4 from 1 reviews

Author: Tastebotanical
Prep Time: 20
Cook Time: 45
Total Time: 1 hour 5 minutes
Yield: 1 loaf cake 1x
Category: Cake
Method: Baking
Cuisine: English

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Ingredients

Scale

For the cake:

4 tablespoons of milk
1 tablespoon of fresh or half a tablespoon of dried culinary lavender
125 g butter
175 g Lavender Sugar (use caster sugar if you do not have Lavender Sugar)
2 eggs
175 g self-raising flour
Zest of 1 orange

For the icing:

Juice of 1 orange
1 tablespoon of fresh or half a tablespoon of dried culinary lavender
100 g icing sugar

Instructions

Set your oven to 180 degrees centigrade or Gas Mark 4.
Put the milk into a small bowl and add the fresh or dried culinary lavender. Heat to scalding point and then set aside to cool. Heating the milk allows it to take on the flavour of the lavender.
Grease a 450 g loaf tin and line the bottom with baking parchment.
Cream the butter with the Lavender Sugar or caster sugar. (I usually soften the butter for about 30 seconds in the microwave first as it makes it much easier!)
Gradually add the eggs to the butter and sugar mixture. If it looks as if it is going to curdle, add some of the self-raising flour.
Once the eggs have been incorporated add the rest of the self-raising flour.
Add the lavender-infused milk and the grated zest of your orange.
Spoon the cake mixture into your prepared loaf tin.
Put the tin in the oven and bake for 45 minutes.
While the cake is baking, squeeze the juice from your orange into a small bowl and add the fresh or dried culinary lavender. Heat to scalding point and then set aside to cool. Heating the juice allows it to take on the flavour of the lavender.
When your cake is done. Remove it from the oven and place on a cooling rack.
When the cake is completely cool. Combine the lavender-infused orange juice with the icing sugar and then pour over the cake.

Keywords: lavender, cake, loaf cake

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