Ginger nuts

I have never baked ginger nuts. I have eaten supermarket packed ginger nuts.

We are trying to reduce the amount of waste we produce. We love biscuits and have far too many, which means lots of packaging going in the bin. There's only two ways of reducing biscuit packaging waste: cut down on their consumption (Nooooo!) or bake your own (OK!).

Reading through 'Forgotten skills of cooking' by Darina Allen and searching for biscuits to do, I came across her ginger nuts recipe.

Serves: Darina says it makes 55, I made them a bit too big so ended up with 'only' 31.
Going into the oven they were 4-5cm diameter but came out of the oven with 7-8cm diameter.

Ingredients:

• 350g plain flour
• 150g granulated sugar
• 2 tsp ground ginger
• 2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 225ml golden syrup
• 150g butter

Method:

1. Warm up the golden syrup gently. I did this by putting the container I measured it into in a hot water bath.
2. Sieve the dry ingredients together into a bowl.
3. Rub the butter into the dry ingredients.
4. Add the warm golden syrup and mix well.
   
5. Roll the mixture into walnut-sized balls (about 10g each). This is where I made the biscuits too big by making the balls into giant walnuts! Darina doesn't mention squashing them but ginger nuts have a squashed look and they are definitely not balls so I decided to give them a more flatter look.
6. Arrange well apart on a baking tray. My trays are non-stick so no need for any baking parchment. I didn't place them apart enough and they ended up shoulder to shoulder.
   
7. Bake at 180°C for 15 min until golden.
8. Leave on the tray for 2-3 min, then lift off and cool on a wire rack.
   

So I have made 31 ginger nuts biscuits. I hope they last for at least a week.

There are two problems with baking your own biscuits:

1. They are better so you tend to eat more.
2. They never last as much as you think and a week later you are left without biscuits again, debating whether you should make time to bake some more or whether to just skip it and hit the supermarket.

Everything good in life demands hard work...