Lola's Copper Biscuits.

I stumbled across this cookie swap on an american blog I'm afraid that I cannot remember which one but it is being organised Love and Olive Oil and thought that it was a fabulous idea so I entered straight away. There are two problems with this though: firstly being that I'm just a little bit of a perfectionist when it come to serving my food so I going to have to make so many batches to get three dozen I am happy with and secondly I am useless at making cookies. The always spread far to much and never end up being chewy. Oh well I suppose practice makes perfect. I thought I would start with a recipe I was given by a friend of my mothers. It was a recipe of her mothers and is apparently fail safe. Copper biscuits are essentially some where between a ginger bread and ginger snap. They have the flavour of a ginger snap but the chewy texture of a ginger bread man. If you are a biscuit dunker like me then these are the biscuits for you.

2 1/2 cups Self raising flour

1 cup Sugar

3tbsp Hot water

1tbsp Golden syrup

3oz Margarine

1 1/2 tsp Ground ginger

1 tsp Bicarbonate of soda

Pre heat the oven to 180C or in the aga the grid shelf in the bottom of the roasting oven with a cold self. Rub the margarine into the sugar and flour until you have the consistency of bread crumbs. Next add in the bicarb, ginger, golden syrup and the water. Bring together the mixture into a dough, roll the dough into walnut sized balls and put onto a baking tray. Bake for about ten minutes until golden brown.

For my christmas hampers I added chopped stem ginger to the basic recipe and then dunked them into dark chocolate.