Guava Jammy Dodgers

BY MISS SOUTH 

Who doesn’t love a Jammy Dodger? All that sticky caramel-like jam and shortcake biscuit? Now imagine if you could customise them and pick your favourite flavour of jam? Make the biscuit more buttery? Or spell out the name of someone you love? Or just make more than a packet holds for half the price?

Your time has come. Meet the easiest biscuit in SW9. You can have a batch of these babies ready to eat in next to no time and everyone will be incredibly impressed. I used guava jam as I had some left from the Brixton trifle I made here a few months ago, but you could use anything you fancy, including marmalade if you want to be the person who crosses the Jaffa Cake with the Jammy Dodger…

Guava Jammy Dodgers: makes about 30 biscuits

• 250g plain flour
• 100g icing sugar
• 125g cold butter, cut into small pieces
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 150g guava jam

Start by sifting the flour and icing sugar into a large bowl. Add the cubed butter and rub it into the flour and icing sugar with your fingertips. It should end up resembling fine breadcrumbs.

Add the egg and the vanilla extract. This allows you to start bringing the breadcrumb texture together into a dough. Use your hands and start kneading and squeezing it until it becomes a large blob.

Bring the dough together fully and put it on a piece of clingfilm and wrap it up tightly before chilling for around 30 minutes. It will be a slightly wet dough rather than stiff.

Put the guava jam in a saucepan and heat it gently. You want it to become a little bit darker and cooked down to a slightly caramel texture. Heat it slowly for a long time rather than boiling it and risking burning it.

Line your baking trays with greaseproof paper. Tear off two extra sheets of greaseproof paper. Lightly oil your work surface and put one sheet on top of it. Take the dough out of the fridge. Cut it in half and place on the greaseproof paper. Keep the rest of the dough in the fridge.

Put the second sheet on top of the dough and start rolling it out with a rolling pin. Roll the dough until about 4 millimetres thick and cut circles out with the neck of a jar or a cutter. I used a 4.5 centimetre cutter.

Cut a whole out of the middle of half the the circles. These are the tops of the biscuits. I used some fancy mini cutters I got in TK Maxx. Leave the other half plain and check you have the same amount of both. Place on the lined trays and bake at 170ºC for 10 minutes.

Once you lift the biscuits out of the oven, pour some boiling water into a mug and put a teaspoon in it. Then use the heated spoon to drop about half a teaspoon of the hot guava jam on the base of the biscuits. Dip the spoon in the hot water each time to help the jam dollop more easily.

Press the cut out tops onto the jam covered bases and press down. Allow to cool for 10-15 minutes minimum before eating or you will fill your mouth with molten jam and want to scream. Enjoy with a cup of tea and everyone’s praise…