Ginger and lime cookies
I fell in love with ginger not so long ago. My husband urged me to try the famous Mcvitie’s Jamaican Ginger Cake and I was unable to stop at one slice only. It has since become my second favourite cake after the carrot cake from the Hummingbird Bakery which we had our wedding.
After the Jamaican cake my views of baking with ginger changed dramatically, before I would never venture out of savoury dishes when using ginger. This recipe calls for ginger in syrup, don’t even try to use powdered ginger or any other form of ginger, you just wouldn’t get the fiery kick rounded up by chewy sweetness.
And don’t be scared by the icing, it’s super easy, you only need 3 ingredients and a piping bag. It flows easily onto the biscuit and any mistakes on the design can be rubbed off with a dab of water on your fingers.
Ginger and lime cookies (yields 20-25 cookies)
Biscuit base:
200g butter
100g caster sugar
zest of 3 limes
360g plain flour
180g stem ginger in syrup (drained), grated
1. Beat sugar and butter with an electric mixer, add grated ginger and zest.
2. Using a paddle attachment add flour to mixture to form a soft dough. Cover and chill in fridge for 20 minutes
3. Roll out dough to 0.5 cm thickness, use a rectangular and a triangle shaped cutter to form the houses (final height was around 10cm). Join the shapes together before baking with a dab of water as glue and pressing them together, lightly with your fingers
4. Preheat the oven to 160C (fan). Chill cut out dough for 20 minutes. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until cookies are lightly golden. Rotate tray if necessary in the oven so that cookies bake evenly
5. Leave it to cool completely on cookie rack before icing.
For the icing (you will have leftovers so ice generously!):
115g icing sugar
7g of powdered egg whites (sometimes called meringue powder)
50-70ml of water
Mix icing sugar with powdered egg whites. Add water slowly whilst mixing with electric whisk on a low speed until it reaches a syrup consistency – you may not need all the water so slowly is the key word here. Then accelerate to maximum speed and whisk for around 3 minutes until fluffy and shiny. I used Wilton piping nozzle number 2 for the cookies
