As you might recall, I’ve recently purchased a copy of Nick Malgieri’s Bake!.
This is first recipe I’ve made, and it’s an absolute winner! I’ve changed the dough shaping method, as I found it too sticky to roll out and cut as Nick suggests, particularly in the middle of a Sydney summer.
The finished wafers are crisp and moreish – the first batch seemed to vanish from the cookie jar in record time, especially when Big Boy discovered he could use them to make icecream sandwiches.
The Muscovado sugar imparts a delicious caramel flavour, but regular light brown sugar would work just as well. Use medium-sized eggs as instructed, or the dough will be too wet to handle.
- 300g (2 cups) plain (AP) flour
- ½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (baking soda), sifted
- ¼ teaspoon fine sea salt
- 170g (6oz) unsalted butter
- 340g (12oz) light brown sugar (I used Muscovado)
- 1 medium egg, plus 1 medium egg yolk (my eggs were 55g each)
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract (I used homemade)
1. In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, bicarb and salt.
2. In the large bowl of an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugar together until combined. Add the egg and the yolk one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the vanilla extract and beat until incorporated. The batter should be quite light and fluffy at this point. Scrape down the bowl.
3. Add the flour mixture and mix at the lowest speed until just combined. Give the mixture a final stir with the scraper to incorporate any remaining flour. Cover the bowl and refrigerate for an hour or so to make the dough easier to handle.
4. Turn the dough onto a large sheet of clingfilm (parchment paper doesn’t seem to work in this case) and roughly shape it into a log.
5. Using the clingfilm, shape the dough into a smooth log, then twist the edges to tighten. Refrigerate the log again for several hours until firm enough to slice.
6. Preheat the oven to 180C (360F) or 170C (340F) with fan. Line two large trays with parchment paper. Unwrap the cold dough and slice it into thin 5mm (about ¼”) discs. Lay them out on the trays, allowing room for spreading. Work quickly, as the dough will warm up and soften with handling.
7. Bake for 10 minutes, rotate the trays, and then bake for a further 5 minutes or until golden brown. The wafers will crisp up as they cool on a wire rack. Store in an airtight container.
Click here for a printable version of this recipe
The dough logs freeze well, which makes it simple to bake these up at short notice. The wafers are quite sweet, but perfect with a cup of tea. They’re reasonably sturdy too, despite being crunchy, and survive quite well in an airtight cookie jar for several days. I can see them becoming a house staple!
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 
These look amazing. My kind of crispy cookie. Plus, if I need to be ultra-decadent, I can add ice cream for cookie sandwiches.
Em, they’re very addictive! Pete and Big Boy were having them with caramelised white chocolate icecream – I’d tried to turn my caramelised white chocolate into a ganache and it had failed, so I bunged the whole lot into the icecream maker.. ;-)
I am so tempted to try this recipe using that new Tate and Lyle half sugar product that I bought recently. I am just not sure how the reduced volume of sugar will effect the biscuit texture. As nearly half of the dough weight is sugar it might not work. Maybe I am better sticking with recipes where sugar makes up less percentage of dough weight… I just don’t know. But like I say, I am very very tempted to try.
Misk, the sugar is probably the dominant characteristic of the recipe, which is why I used Muscovado. It’s expensive and I normally wouldn’t use it for baking, but in this case, it really affected the flavour of the finished cookie. I’m not sure how it would work with less sugar.
The other thing you could do is freeze it in small portions, and just slice off a few cookies to bake each time…
Oh ice-cream sandwiches with these would be divine! Clever fellow! c
He is clever, but he hoovered up my cookies – I had to stop him after he’d had his third icecream sandwich! :)
Your cookie/biscuits look marvelous- they always do!
I’ve been looking for a nice crisp crunchy cookie- I’m going to try these!
Thanks again, Celia!
Heidi, the original recipe said to refrigerate the dough then to roll it out, a quarter at a time, on well floured surface to 5mm (1/4″) and cut it with cookie cutters. I just couldn’t make it work – it’s too hot and sticky here at the moment, and I’m not that adept at dough rolling at the best of times – but maybe you can?
They would
Make the perfect ice cream sandwich. Yum!
SG, they were very good! I was having them with morning tea. I must make some more – the cookie jar is empty again!
Those look just perfect!
Thanks Greg! They really were.. :)
Ooh, they look very lovely!
Thanks Cindy! It was nice to able to add a new freezer cookie for 2012! :)
I’ve got a lot of baking for the school fundraisers coming up so bookmarking this. These’ll be perfect.
Sally, they’re good in that you can make the dough and keep it in the freezer until you need it, plus each batch makes quite a lot of cookies!
These look awesome, Fig! I love the method too, so cool.
Thank you! :) The method was born out of necessity, and they’re not quite as pretty as Mr Malgieri’s ones…
Ice-cream sandwiches sounds like the perfect way to enjoy these. Yum! I think this year I’m going to try and keep the freezer stocked with a few lots of cookie dough so I can always have fresh cookies.
Claire, I emptied out the freezer of all my cookie dough last Christmas, so now’s the time to restock it again. I love having at least three or four rolls in there!
Some foods are so addicting for me, I would add this recipe to them. I love the muscovado sugar and.. my heart perked up when I read “ice cream sandwiches”!!
Smidge, the muscovado sugar made a big difference, and the recipe really seems to work better with light brown rather than the dark brown version!
and might i add that they would be perfect with a cup of tea..:)
Jane, they are just soooo perfect with a cup of tea! :)
I like the sound of that ice cream sandwich!
Deb, it was surprising how fast the cookie jar emptied with the discovery of icecream sandwiches! ;-)
Yum! Those look wonderful; I haven’t tried this recipe yet. And brilliant idea to make ice cream sandwiches….we’ll have to try that here!
Abby, your version would be in US cups, and the dough might not be as soft, so it might work well as a roll and cut cookie?
What a better idea than rolling and cutting! Muscovado sugar is lovely isn’t it, and a recipe like this would be perfect for letting its flavour shine through.
Clever Big Boy indeed!
Becca, the best thing is that we can slice off and bake a respectable quantity (although they all get eaten straight away anyway! :)).
Celia, I love how you always improve the instructions on a recipe. Cookbooks don’t always get it right, as you well know. You are my kind of cookery writer!
Lizzy, you’re very kind, but I don’t know that the cookbooks get it wrong – sometimes I just can’t get things to work as easily as I’d like. We all have to adjust to our own kitchens and cooking styles! :)
Celia your wafers look so delicious.
I make marmalade with a small portion of Muscovado and jam sugar; the taste is wonderful!
Because I convert to gluten free, I need to refrigerate for at least 2 hours (or up to a day if I forget) could you dust with the merest whisper of glutinous rice flour for the humidity?
Elaine, thanks for the suggestion, I do think dusting with rice flour or rye flour would help with rolling out, although I usually do so between two sheets of parchment. But as I said, I’m a bit rubbish at it, so any excuse to avoid it is good! :)
Bake! is a very nice book. It’s not chockful of recipes, but the ones in there seem very good.
I just had a peek at Bake, the pear and walnut tart looks divine
The boy was asking for cookies. Why buy when you can bake? These look perfect!
Maz
That’s exactly what I think too, Maz! Hope your boy likes his cookies! :)
I love a crispy biscuit so these are top of my list to make. Think I would like to add some ginger too.
:-) Mandy
Ooh Mandy, now there’s a nice idea…thanks!
I love a nice crispy cookie and muscovado gives everything such a nice licoricey flavour! :D
I’m a recent convert to Muscovado, and I’m completely hooked! :)
They look great Celia, a really versatile recipe to have in your repertoire. I can understand why they’ll become a staple!
Thanks C! It doesn’t feel right if I don’t have a few rolls of freezer dough on standby! :)
I love having cookies in the tin, waiting for me when I need to snack :)
Tandy, I wish they’d last in the tin here! But the boys hoover them up as soon as they’re made! :)
I love muscovado sugar, such a rich caramelly flavour. Mmm!
Kavey, me too! I especially like the dark sugar, but it just didn’t work so well in this recipe!
That’s a very clever idea about freezing a batch. Good for when there are only 2 of you :)
Claire, there’s never just two of us, at least not yet! But freezing means I can feed starving wolves when they stalking the kitchen.. ;-)
These cookies look so yummy that I will be giving them a try today. I don’t have Muscovado sugar, but I do have our version of a dark brown sugar so I am hoping to get close to your results!
Hi Cindy! I tried it with both dark and light Muscovado, and found the light worked better for us, but it should still be fine with the dark! :)
What beautiful and perfect looking cookies Celia. I should make a batch of these – perfect for the school holidays.
Charlie, they’re very moreish, I was surprised how much the kids liked them – Small Man usually prefers his cookies with chocolate in them!
Just you wait until I start rolling out cookies…I will try yours first….
Norma, good on you, I’m a bit rubbish at rolling out dough! :)
Celia there must be biscuits in the air. All I feel like baking at the moment is biscuits…
These ones with muscavado sugar? It could never really go wrong now could it ;-)
Brydie, it was you that got me onto the muscovado in the first place, thank you! :)
These look delicious….with all the ingredients on hand I think I will make these for Mr Shady Pine. Muscovado sugar is so luxurious and I should use it more often that I do in place of white.
Anna, I hope they’re a hit! :)
Ooh, another baking book! I haven’t come across that one – will be checking it out though. I do so love another cookie recipe, too, thanks.
Amanda, after a while, a lot of cookie recipes start to feel the same, so it was nice to find one that was quite different, for us at least. It was like an old fashioned wafer!
I can never find that sugar in my supermarket!!
Mrs Bok, we’ve had to hunt around to find it, but lately it seems more readily available. It’s not really a supermarket item though – more a deli or speciality grocer one.
I really need to use that trick of keeping a cookie log in the freezer. We are chewy cookie people here, but those do look awfully good. I totally approve of the ice cream sandwich idea!!! I have some Turbinado sugar, but I’ve never purchased Muscovado sugar. Its different right?
Mel, I think turbinado sugar refers to what we call raw sugar, which isn’t the same as the Muscovado. The latter is basically brown sugar. What I’ve read is this: normal brown sugar is made by purifying the sugar crystals to white, then adding molasses back in to colour it. Muscovado or rapadura sugar (as it’s also known) is less processed – so it’s only processed until the required amount of molasses is removed, if that makes sense.
I love ice box cookies and kind of “rediscover” them periodically. These look great and agreed, ice cream sandwich here I come!
Thanks for stopping by! The only problem with ice cream sandwiches is that the cookie jar empties twice as fast! :)
Dear Celia, I’ll be visiting Sydney from Singapore in Feb 2012. Just wondering if you know of anyone who conducts classes in Jam Making? I would really love to experience that for a change instead of doing the usual touristy stuff :)Cheers! Julia
Julia, I’m sorry I can’t help you – I’ve never done a cooking class! And I’ve never heard of anyone running jam making classes – it’s not really a big thing here in Sydney. Even buying the equipment is quite difficult!
I adore cookies and brown sugar, both–no question these will be sheer heaven!
Kathryn, we’ve had to take a little break from them – no-one could stop eating them! :)
Just popped over from Joanna’s to see the Chinese lanterns. Those are neat. Then I saw this post – wow those look delicious. Emily
Thanks for dropping by, Emily! :)