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from a collection of recipe from Switzerland in the 70s - a very simple "sandy" cookie (sable) with raisins (other variants possible with cocoa, almonds, chocolate chips, candied orange, icing etc.).
They are extremely good for such a simple recipe - this was one of the favorite christmas biscuit in our house, and one we made mountains off so they would last into the winter.
Ingredients
Makes 12 servings
- 250g butter, soft
- 250g sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 tsp salt (if unsalted butter!)
- Zest of a lemon
- 500g flour
- raisin variant
- rum
- 150g raisins
Preparation
soak the raisins in rum or rum and warm water for 30 minutes (I use half/half)
work the butter until is is creamy (it turns white and starts having a whipped texture). This is tiring work but needed for the biscuits to have the right texture
add sugar and mix thoroughly
add the 2 eggs mixed with the salt (if unsalted butter is used) and the lemon zest
gradually add the flour and the drained raisins, knead it all together well (I just dump it all at once)
Roll the dough in long sausages, wrap in foil or plastic wrap, and put in the fridge to set, at least 30 minutes, preferable an hour or even overnight. (if you are planning to cut shapes in it, then just leave the dough in a big ball to rest 1 hour or longer)
Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius
Cut the rolls in 1/2cm slices, put the slices on a baking tray
bake for 15-20 minutes until golden
Note: these freeze well in plastic containers - we made them in november then froze them till christmas where we would give them as gifts
Note: I always double the recipe, would triple/quadruple it except i find the butter too much work then, so i do several double batches - usually when butter is on promotion.
Variants:
The same base without raisins can be rolled and cut in shapes and glazed.
We have also done it with orange zest and candied orange, and an orange juice frosting.
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Comments
made them again today, currently have the dough in the fridge. I'll take more images once they are baked.
one thing I noticed making these in the UK is that the butter (I bought the standard kind of butter you get for about 1.30, not the cheap stuff or the premium stuff) seems to have a lot more water in it (or it's less well integrated). When i was working the butter soft, water was literally coming out in drops. As a result it was harder to get the right texture in the butter, and the sugar didnt melt as well. The resulting biscuits were a bit different in texture, still good but not quite a smooth.
Hi, These look great. Do you think you could use a cake mixer to cream the butter? Or do you think its best done by hand?
I translated without thinking but I'm pretty sure it works with a mixer, cant imagine why it wouldn't. Pretty sure we have used a bamix to do that bit in the past. The goal is to get the butter creamy and get some air in it, without whipping it outright. Use something that mixes softly (i.e. a disk or plastic mixer tool rather than a blade) if you have a choice. This is actually a pretty forgiving recipe, so I suspect you could just put the butter in a mixer, mix till you get nice soft peaks in the butter, add the eggs straight in, then sugar. You might have to switch to spoon when adding the flour and raisins. Should work fine.
Tried it using my cake mixer and it worked fine. I made the plain biscuits using 100ish g of ground almonds in place of some of the flour and they are very tasty. They are slightly soft in the middle and I can't decide if this is a good or bad thing.
Glad it worked out - this is a very forgiving recipe so great for experimenting. I suspect the softness would be the almonds retaining moisture - that is one case where if you dont want that softness only rest the dough 30minutes to 1 hour, and if you do want it rest it longer. Just a guess :D This does remind me that we have done it with almond splinters (not sure what they are called in english, not the really thin slices but little stick like chunks) - and (even better) with roasted hazelnuts (I love hazelnuts).
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