Old Fashioned Nice Biscuits
Am I the only one who wasn't aware that Nice biscuits are coconut flavoured? A childhood spent eating them out of battered biscuit tins and I never knew.
I've been doing some work and research on old-fashioned biscuits for Reading's Year of Culture. Huntley and Palmers was once the biggest biscuit factory in the world - most biscuits seem to stem back to it including Iced Gems, Gingernuts and many others. They are based in Reading, so I spoke at an event and shared biscuits with ex-factory workers and people with fond memories of the company.
Whilst testing recipes from the Huntley and Palmers collection, I tried my hand at Nice biscuits (accompanied by endless puns based around the word 'Nice'). Whilst being very simple and plain looking, this homemade version carries big coconut flavour and melts in the mouth. Pronouced 'Nice' or 'Neice', we will never know, but I can certainly vouch that the are nice!
Nice biscuits:
Ingredients:
50g desiccated coconut, plus more for sprinkling
110g caster sugar
225g butter, at room temperature
200g plain flour
100g corn flour
2 tablespoons caster sugar
Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 160 degrees fan and line a large baking tray with baking parchment.
Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl until light and fluffy. Stir in the flour, corn flour and coconut pieces until a dough forms, and then chill for 30 minutes.
Roll out the dough to a 1cm thickness and use a square fluted cutter to cut out biscuits. Reroll the dough to get as many biscuits as you can. Arrange on the baking tray, sprinkle with sugar and bake for 10-12 minutes.
Allow to cool, then keep the biscuits in an airtight tin for up to one week.
