Famous biscuits

"Mum! These biscuits should be famous!"

"Shall I put them on my blog then?"

"Yes! And don't forget the rules."

Much as I think the Beautiful Girl has radically over-estimated the impact of this little blog, these scrummy biscuits are most definitely worthy of note. Crisp, buttery and with a faint tang of lemon, they came about because the BG received some new biscuit cutters for her eighth birthday from one of her friends and wanted to use them STRAIGHT AWAY. A quick Google turned this up on the BBC Good Food website - easy peasy, though short on 'rules' (which, as Monica Geller and I both know "help control the fun").



Lemony biscuits (makes approx 24, depending on the size of your cutters)

250g butter, softened
140g caster sugar
zest of 2 lemons
1 egg yolk
300g plain flour

Cream together the butter and sugar, stir in the lemon zest and egg yolk. Gradually work in the flour, using your fingers to bring it together into a ball. Put the dough into the fridge (this is rule 1), as it makes it easier to work.
Meanwhile, pre-heat the oven to 180C and prepare a couple of baking trays. (I use non-stick foil because the biscuits just slide off and because they then don't need to make contact with my rust-patched, 25-year-old baking trays.) Roll out the dough to barely half a centimetre thick, remembering rule 2 (handle the dough as lightly and gently as possible so the biscuits don't end up tough as old boots) and cut shapes with a cutter while bearing in mind rule 3 (try and position the cutter such  that you have to re-roll as few times as possible).
Place in the oven for 15 minutes, swapping the position of the trays around once during cooking, until they are very pale gold in colour. They'll crisp up as they cool, and you can decorate them, if you like, with some icing sugar stirred with a few drops of lemon juice.