Some of my experimental baking is intentional (the lime and ginger cake below, for example, where I didn't realise the lime would completely overpower the ginger), and some is accidental. The rosewater biscuits I made this week were a mixture of both.
I intended to make rosewater biscuits for my friend Sarah, as she loved the rosewater jam tarts I'd made before. And I thought I'd try to crystallise some borage to decorate them - the flavours might not go well, but at least they'd look pretty.
I used Peggy Porschen's vanilla biscuit recipe from the book Cake Chic, and deliberately added 1 tsp of rosewater as well as a little vanilla extract. But I ran out of plain flour after 250g, so I topped up with 150g self-raising flour. The dough was wetter than other biscuit doughs I'm used to, but I thought that might be the liquid of the flavouring (Peggy uses drier flavourings for her biscuits - vanilla pod seeds, zest or cocoa powder).
Anyhow. After it had chilled for an hour, I rolled it out, cut some sensible shapes for my friend and some rabbits for me, and baked them. There was a lot of dough, so I froze two "logs" of it, so I can easily take out, slice and bake another time.
The half-risen rosewater biscuits seemed nice to me! Maybe the self-raising flour meant they were softer, I don't know - I've never understood the science of baking. I'm only doing it for pleasure, so I can afford to make mistakes!
When they'd cooled down, I iced a few of them with "Grape violet" coloured royal icing, added the few crystallised borage flowers that hadn't gone all gooey, and used the stencils that Sarah gave me for my birthday last year to add some blue sugar dust. The rest I kept plain for me.
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