Maltese Biscuits Recipes

MALTESE FIGOLLI BISCUITS

Steps:

• Finely grate the zest of 2 lemons
• Cut the butter (200g) into cubes and place in a large bowl with the plain flour (400g), caster sugar (250g) and baking powder (1 tsp). Rub the butter into the dry ingredients (as you would if you're making pastry) until it resembles breadcrumbs.
• Add the lemon zest and orange blossom water (4 tsp) to the bowl and stir to evenly distribute them through the other ingredients.
• Add the egg yolks (5 yolks) and using your hands mix them into the other ingredients until they come together (I tend to find that using a squeezing action works best).
• Wrap the dough in cling film and pop it into a fridge for a few minutes while you make the filling.
• Put all of your ingredients into a large bowl (200g caster sugar, 2 medium egg whites, 200g ground almonds, 2 tsp almond extract).
• Mix until combined (yes, it's that simple!)
• Make the biscuits
• Pre-heat the oven to 170ºC/150ºC fan
• Line your baking tray with some greaseproof paper or similar (I always use bake-o-glide sheets)
• Roll out your biscuit dough until it is about 2mm thick (I prefer to only roll out enough for a couple of biscuits at a time as it's more manageable). If you find that the dough is sticking to the rolling pin/work surface then try rolling it out between two sheets of cling film, that way it peels off easily.
• Roll out the filling (again, this is much easier to do between two sheets of cling film).
• Using a cookie cutter, cut two identical shapes from the dough and one from the filling. Make a sandwich of dough, filling, dough and place onto your baking tray. If you're cutting a fancy shape it can be a little tricky to line up the three layers. To get them perfectly aligned, cut the shape in the dough, place the cut shape onto the filling and use it to line up to cutter, pick up both pieces together and then put these onto the dough for making the base.
• Once you've cut out all of your biscuits, put them into the oven and bake for 20 minutes until they're starting to brown on top.
• Remove them from the oven and leave them to cool on the tray for a couple of minutes, then transfer them to a cooling rack to cool completely.
• Once they've cooled they're ready to decorate (or as I prefer, sprinkle with icing sugar and gobble them all up :-) )

MALTESE ALMOND BISCUITS

Steps:

• Pre-heat the oven to 180oC
• Mix together the ground almonds and castor sugar
• Fold almonds/sugar into egg whites until sugar becomes dissolved and you are left with a sticky mix
• Scoop out little balls of the mix and place onto edible rice paper (or grease-proof paper if you cant get) and add an almond/glacier cherry onto each
• Bake for 15 minutes and leave to cool

CHRISTENING BISCUIT- MALTESE

Steps:

• Beat the egg white till stiff.
• Add sugar to make a meringue.
• Stir in egg yolks.
• Gently stir in all other ingredients except flour.
• Fold in flour.
• Shape into circles or ovals about the size of the palm of your hand, by gently shaping the mix in your hand.
• Bake in a hot over for 7-10 minutes, till cooked but not brown.
• Allow to cool and ice swirl in appropriate colour.