Cornish Fairings

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Two large baking trays
• •Baking parchment
• •Large mixing bowl
• •Wire cooling rack

Instructions

1. 1

   Heat the oven

   Set the oven to 180C/160C fan. Line two baking trays with parchment. Don't skimp on the parchment. These biscuits spread, and they spread enthusiastically, and you want them peeling away cleanly when they're done.

   Two trays, not one. They need room. Crowd them and you'll end up with one big sheet of biscuit, which has its own appeal but isn't what we're after.
2. 2

   Mix the dry ingredients

   Sift the flour, bicarbonate, baking powder, ginger, mixed spice, cinnamon, and salt into a large bowl. Give it a stir with your fingers and have a sniff. The kitchen should already smell of Christmas markets and bonfire smoke. If it doesn't, your spices have been in the cupboard too long. Open new ones.

3. 3

   Rub in the butter

   Add the cubed butter to the dry ingredients. Rub it in with your fingertips, lifting and dropping the mixture as you go, until it looks like fine breadcrumbs. No big lumps. Cold hands help. If the butter starts to feel greasy and soft, put the bowl in the fridge for ten minutes and come back to it.

   You can do this in a food processor in seconds, and I sometimes do, but rubbing butter into flour with your hands is one of the small pleasures of baking. Don't deny yourself.
4. 4

   Bring it together

   Stir in the sugar. Then add the golden syrup, straight from the tin, and bring everything together with a wooden spoon and then your hands. The dough will feel soft and slightly sticky, the colour of pale toffee. If it's too dry to come together, add another teaspoon of syrup. Trust your fingers. They know the right consistency before your head does.

5. 5

   Roll into balls

   Take walnut-sized pieces of dough and roll them between your palms into smooth balls. About the size of a generous cherry. Set them on the trays with plenty of space between them, at least five centimetres. They will spread to roughly twice their size and crack open across the top as they bake. That's what you want.

6. 6

   Bake until crackled

   Bake for ten to twelve minutes. Watch the second tray closely. They're ready when they've spread out flat, the tops have crackled into deep fissures, and the edges have gone a proper deep amber. They will still be soft in the middle when you take them out. This is correct. Pull them too early and they're cakey; leave them too long and they go brittle.

   Around minute eight, you'll hear them. Press your ear close to the oven door. There's a quiet hissing as the syrup bubbles. When the hissing slows, they're nearly there.
7. 7

   Cool on the tray

   Leave them on the tray for five minutes when they come out of the oven. They're too soft to move at first and will tear if you try. As they cool, they firm up and the edges go properly crisp while the middle stays chewy. Then transfer to a wire rack with a palette knife. Eat one warm. It's the cook's right.

Chef Tips

• •Spices lose their voice over time. If your ground ginger has been in the cupboard since last Christmas, it's probably tired. Buy fresh for these. The whole point is the warmth of the spice, and a faded jar will give you a faded biscuit.
• •Golden syrup is non-negotiable. Honey won't behave the same way in the oven, treacle is too dark and bitter, maple syrup belongs to a different kind of baking entirely. Lyle's, in the green and gold tin, is what these biscuits were made with for over a century. There's no need to improvise.
• •Don't be precious about the size or shape. They spread and crack however they want, and the ones that look most rustic taste best. Uniformity is for shop biscuits. These are for your kitchen.
• •Stored in a tin with a tight lid, they keep for about a week, though the texture shifts. Day one they're chewy in the middle. Day three they've gone fully crisp through. Both versions are good, just different. I prefer them on day two, halfway between.

Advance Preparation

• •The dough can be made a day ahead, rolled into balls, and kept in the fridge on a tray covered with cling film. Bake straight from cold; they'll need an extra minute in the oven.
• •The unbaked dough balls also freeze well for up to a month. Bake from frozen, adding two or three minutes to the cooking time.
• •Baked biscuits keep in an airtight tin for up to a week, though the texture moves from chewy toward crisp as the days go by.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 21g)