Straight outta tuck shop

Saturday 12 November 2016. There was Pea Soup everywhere and not in my kitchen either; rather outside as the November Rain was causing visibility to be of the same consistency as that well-known starter dish. Eventually this gave way to weak beams of sunshine in the late afternoon, but still with weather like the stuff we'd had earlier a bit of comfort food was definitely needed.

I remembered the sweet yet hard-edged biscuits we used to get served at break time from the tuck shop during my school days twenty years previously and that, together with the fact I was seeing two close mates from my schooldays later that evening, inspired me to make some very sweet biscuits.

The ingredients for the dough of the biscuits were as follows:

150 grams Caster Sugar.
200 grams Margarine.
250 grams Flour.
A tablespoon of Madagascar Vanilla Essence

In a mixing bowl I creamed together the margarine and Sugar using a wooden spoon until  it was fluffy. I then added the flour and Vanilla Essence and mixed it in until I had created a cookie dough that was about the consistency of dough or slightly damp clay.

I then rolled out the cookie dough and then cut it into eleven circles. Next I put the pieces of dough on a greased baking tray and then cooked on Gas Mark 4 for forty minutes before leaving them to cool on the worktop.

While all this was going on I listened to the Who Live at the Royal Albert Hall, a live album from the early 2000s that found the band reinvigorated and forging a fresh new direction. This was something I could definitely relate to.

After the biscuits had cooled down I mixed together 350 grams of Icing Sugar with quarter of a pint of boiling water. I spread a little bit on each biscuit and before the icing dried up I added a Glace Cherry to the top of each of the freshly iced biscuits.

The next day a good friend of mine came round for afternoon tea and we had an enjoyable time chewing the fat on life and the vagaries of well-known housing estates. We also chewed up some of the biscuits and I found that the sweet taste and the crumbly consistency made it feel like I'd travelled in time to a wet November breaktime in 1996. Nothing wrong with that.

Cherries aplenty on these delicious throwbacks.