Post by Mrs. Goblin on Feb 12, 2012 0:24:47 GMT -5
For this month's 2nd Friday English Country Dance party, I made a batch of Ratafia Biscuits using the recipe in "Lobscouse and Spotted Dog" (by Grossman & Thomas). I was pressed for time, and these looked very quick to make. No fancy alterations, I just made them according to the redaction presented in the book, using 4 oz. ground almonds + 3/4 t. almond extract instead of the 3 oz. ground sweet almonds, 1 oz. ground bitter almonds or peeled apricot kernels mix alternately suggested as a more period (although potentially poisonous) ingredient.
I used Trader Joe's ground almond meal, which still has bits of the dark almond skin in the mix. I'm not sure how much difference it made with texture or taste, but you can certainly see flecks of darker color that lend a rather rustic quality to what should be a high class biscuit. I would like to try making these up again with skinless almond meal (like the bag of Bob's Red Mill Almond flour I know I have in my pantry somewhere but couldn't find.) But I am far too lazy to blanch and grind my own almonds for a Friday night snack.
The dough mixed up very quickly, but as each tray took 20 minutes to bake, and you can't put many biscuits on a tray because they spread out a lot, I was in the kitchen for a LONG time.
The recipe suggests baking the biscuits on brown grocery bags instead of "a tin plate, flour'd" and described a rather laborious process of removing the biscuits from the brown paper using a wet dishcloth. I don't have a lot of brown grocery bags lying around, so I used parchment paper to line my baking sheets and had no trouble whatsoever getting the biscuits off when they had finished baking.
One batch of dough made about 50 biscuits. They are VERY crisp, almost candylike in their crunch and sweetness. Mine were very flat, but otherwise tasted almost exactly like Italian amaretti cookies, which have a more domed shape and a slightly softer interior. In fact, given that the ingredients for both these ratafia biscuits and the amaretti recipes I've been looking at are nearly identical, I wouldn't bother making this recipe again if I weren't curious about my ingredients. If I just wanted to feed them to people, I'd go to my local Italian grocery and buy a couple bags of commercial amaretti cookies instead.
Unfortunately, our dance practice was unexpectedly cancelled last night so I was not able to solicit any opinions from our regulars. But I will probably serve them next Saturday at our Cyprians' Ball event in Alameda.
I used Trader Joe's ground almond meal, which still has bits of the dark almond skin in the mix. I'm not sure how much difference it made with texture or taste, but you can certainly see flecks of darker color that lend a rather rustic quality to what should be a high class biscuit. I would like to try making these up again with skinless almond meal (like the bag of Bob's Red Mill Almond flour I know I have in my pantry somewhere but couldn't find.) But I am far too lazy to blanch and grind my own almonds for a Friday night snack.
The dough mixed up very quickly, but as each tray took 20 minutes to bake, and you can't put many biscuits on a tray because they spread out a lot, I was in the kitchen for a LONG time.
The recipe suggests baking the biscuits on brown grocery bags instead of "a tin plate, flour'd" and described a rather laborious process of removing the biscuits from the brown paper using a wet dishcloth. I don't have a lot of brown grocery bags lying around, so I used parchment paper to line my baking sheets and had no trouble whatsoever getting the biscuits off when they had finished baking.
One batch of dough made about 50 biscuits. They are VERY crisp, almost candylike in their crunch and sweetness. Mine were very flat, but otherwise tasted almost exactly like Italian amaretti cookies, which have a more domed shape and a slightly softer interior. In fact, given that the ingredients for both these ratafia biscuits and the amaretti recipes I've been looking at are nearly identical, I wouldn't bother making this recipe again if I weren't curious about my ingredients. If I just wanted to feed them to people, I'd go to my local Italian grocery and buy a couple bags of commercial amaretti cookies instead.
Unfortunately, our dance practice was unexpectedly cancelled last night so I was not able to solicit any opinions from our regulars. But I will probably serve them next Saturday at our Cyprians' Ball event in Alameda.