Seaside Biscuits (Our Signature Bake)

Our favourite TV programme at the moment is "The Great British Bake Off". The week before last they had a small section on Aberffraw Biscuits, a traditional biscuit baked on the Island of Anglesey in North Wales, and shaped in a scallop shell.

So, because we have a few scallop shells handy, we decided to have a go at making our own version.

My white scallop shells were just too big to use as biscuit moulds. They were bought at a fishmongers in Southwold, when we were on holiday once. So we decided to use a smaller black one that my husband found on a beach in Cornwall.

So first we made a standard shortbread. We didn't have any wholemeal flour, so used 200g of butter, 300g of plain flour, and 100g of caster sugar.

First cut up the butter.

Then mix the flour and sugar.

Then rub the butter into the dry ingredients.

We kneaded our dough into a ball, and then rolled it out.

Then we cut around the shell.

 My shell was too flat to put the dough in, so we pressed the shell as hard as we could into the dough.

I was a bit worried that the markings would disappear when cooked. But all was fine.

They looked great on the baking trays.

We also made a few round biscuits, for which I had another plan.

For the round biscuits I made a very simple stencil from a piece of paper, and we sprinkled icing sugar to turn them into sand dollars. If you don't know about sand dollars, see my previous post in September. Some people call sand dollars sea biscuits.

Our final plate of seaside biscuits looked very appetizing, and melted in the mouth. The scallop biscuits were quite large, so I am on the look out for a slightly smaller shell to mould them in next time.