How to make cardamom diamond biscuits

Fiona MacConnacher shows you how to add a little sparkle to your biscuit tin
Fiona Macconnacher15 February 2017

Diamonds are a girl’s best friend and yet they’re tacky for anyone under 40; the advice is conflicting. Thankfully the biscuits of the same name don’t come burdened with the same rhetoric so you can enjoy them at ease over a cup of Scandi-strength coffee.

My love affair with cardamom started when I journeyed solo across Sweden a few years ago. After an 18 hour train journey from the depths of the Arctic, I arrived in Stockholm, found myself a little cafe on Södermalm and had my first ever cardamom bun. Maybe it was the peculiar exhaustion one gets from travelling but I can boldly claim I have never been so sated from a knot of dough.

It was during this same trip that I first met my French friend who would unwittingly spur me to move to France to learn the art of patisserie. These dainty biscuits are a nod to her influence: a bitesize fusion of French and Scandinavian baking.

Getting their name from the glimmer of sugar around the edge, Diamonds can be infused to suit the receiver’s palate if cardamom isn’t your bag. Vanilla is undisputable, citrus zest too. Rosewater in the mixture with a singular pistachio on top would really not go amiss. Mix it up: it is your blank biscuity canvas.

Ingredients (makes around 40 small biscuits)

225g butter

320g flour

100g icing sugar

Around 7 cardamom pods

Pinch of salt

Sugar, for coating

1-2 egg yolks for egg wash

Best cake tins - in pictures

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Method

1. With a pestle and mortar, grind the cardamom seeds until fairly fine. Add this to your dry ingredients along with cubed butter and rub with your fingertips until the mix resembles fine breadcrumbs.

2. On a clean work surface, tip your mixture directly in front of you on the work surface. Using the bottom of your palm spread the mixture away from you, bit by bit, to smear in the butter, a technique known as fraisage. This is a technique you must try when making shortcrust pastry too - the end result is a much better, flakier pastry, and who doesn’t want that? You might have to fraisage the mix a couple of times but, as soon as it starts to come together, stop, so as not to overwork it, and form into a ball - use a dough scraper to clear your surface and bring together any AWOL crumbs.

3. Divide your dough into 4 parts and roll each one into a long cylinder - you will be cutting your biscuits from these so roll to your desired diameter - mine were about 3cm across. Pop these into the fridge.

4. Whilst these are chilling, heat your oven up to 160°C / Fan 140°C / Gas mark 3. Prepare a plate or tray with sugar - I used granulated but caster will give a finer, more refined finish. Also prepare your egg yolks and a pastry brush. Line your baking sheets too if they are of the non-stick variety.

5. After about 15 mins in the fridge, remove a cylinder at a time and brush with egg yolk and then roll in sugar to coat. With a small, sharp knife, cut decisively into 1cm thick discs and place on your prepared baking sheets, evenly spaced allowing for a little spreading. With your thumb, press in the middle so that there is a little crater in each.

6. Continue with the remaining cylinders. If you find you are taking a little longer, or have to attend to other matters in the interim, return your dough or baking sheets to the fridge in order to keep them chilled; this will prevent your biscuits baking into a shortbread leviathan. Don’t worry, it’s happened to us all.

7. Bake for around 18 minutes, or until they are a pale golden colour. Leave to cool on a wire rack and, if at all possible, enjoy a few of them whilst still warm. In fact, I insist.

If you are providing as a gift, put in an airtight container where they will keep for several days but best to present them as fresh as you can.

Fiona MacConnacher is a Patisserie Graduate from Le Cordon Bleu Paris. Follow her on Instagram @thecapedpatissiere or on Twitter @fifimacc

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