Can I bake you a biscuit dad?

If your teenagers are still at home on their Easter holidays, you may be struggling to devise sufficient activities or suggestions concerning how they spend their time wisely. They might be drifting into that unique and quite profound sense of ennui that they do when they reach the teenage years. Unless you have sent them on a pig butchery course that is.

Their listlessness and your stress levels might be cured, temporarily at least, with a decent cup of tea and a biscuit – a efficacious remedy that should not be overlooked merely on the basis of its simplicity. Even better, get them to make you some biscuits. These ones are very good.

Almond, orange and cardamom biscuits

170g unsalted butter
1 tablespoon golden syrup
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
Dash of boiling water
160g plain flour
120g caster sugar
140g flaked and toasted almonds
5 green cardamon pods – remove the black seeds then crush in a pestle and mortar
zest of 1 orange

Melt the butter and syrup together in a pan. Dissolve the bicarb in a dash of boiling water and stir into the butter mixture. Mix the other ingredients together in a bowl, and then stir into the butter mixture in the pan. Heat your oven to 160deg C. Line your baking tray with greased baking parchment. Use a spoon or your hands to form small balls of the mixture, and place on the tray. Allow room for the biscuits to spread out. Bake for around 15 to 20 minutes.

The biscuits spread out much more than you think, and end up rather like a thin French style butter biscuit. As such, make sure you give them ample room on the baking tray. They are delicious and well worth the effort that your offspring have made.