Giant jammy biscuit- or some such thing

Two layers of sweet pastry bigger than your head sandwiched with a reduced raspberry jam? What is not to love. Particularly if you are 8. The perfect serving size for one apparently.

Rose gives an ominous warning - a simple and elegant recipe which requires the skill of a crafts person to achieve.  I am not ashamed to admit a little preening after this pulled out of the oven.

Despite Rose's warning, I did find this recipe pretty simple, and relatively quick.  Well, definitely quick in effort. Chilling time extends this to something that can't be knocked out quickly. Rose has you makes the biscuit first, but I think in future I would reduce the jam first because that took the longest time to cool, and protracted the time a little more.

To the biscuit.  This feels very similar to the pastry on the French orange tart.  That pastry is now my go to sweet pastry.  People swoon over that pastry.  I am feeling you it is the fastest way to a table full of compliments.  In place of the turbinado sugar I used demerrera which adds an extra crunch to the biscuit as well as imparting a very subtle caramel flavour (could be that I am imagining that last bit).  To the whizzed sugar the cold butter is added until the sugar disappears. Then flour and salt is whizzed in until pea size, then egg added until it forms slightly bigger clumps.

Actually have just reread the French orange tart pastry and they are really nothing alike other than the turbinado sugar.  Good for you all to know how amazing that pastry is.

I rolled out the biscuit without the requisite chilling without any issues. Once cut into a 12 inch disk I did refrigerate both top and bottom biscuit.  I had a mad scramble to find two baking tray sheets big enough.  Once top and bottom were chilled, one was scored with the wedges with natty cut outs, assuming you had natty cutters which I do, but not in quaint tiny size. I improvised with an icing coupler for a minimalist circle.  This is then chilled for a bit longer to minimise the stress (of the baker) when executing the sandwich move.

In amongst all this rolling and chilling and cutting and chilling, a jar of seedless raspberry jam is reduced from 357 grams to 314 grams.  I was less precise with this section of the recipe... I put the jam in the pan and put it on the gas and then went to check in the boys who were ensconced in front of a particularly entertaining episode of "How to train your dragon".  Not sure how long I was distracted. Long enough to burn the bottom of the pan. But not long enough to set off the smoke alarm. It wasn't even a minor disaster. I dipped my finger in and decided it didn't taste too burned.

 No idea how much it weighed, there was enough to spread around.

Once the jam was applied, the edges painted with (sorry can't use the word moistened because I know loads of people who have the heebies from that word) water  and then the top biscuit is applied.  I am not quite sure how I did that. I think I just lifted it up and plonked it on top. Like a true crafts person.

The edges are pinched together with a fork and then rose instructs poking it all over in a radiating design. Given I couldn't see any evidence of holes in her photo I decided that was a waste of effort and opted out of that instruction.  The assembled biscuit has one more chillax before baking,

The end result was a big biscuit, resulting in great excitement. Once cut into 12 wedges, it was slightly less exciting but also meant there was no fighting to the death to see who took the biscuit.

This is the type of sandwich biscuit I like making. Only two shapes to cut and sandwich instead of endless rolling and faffing.   The biscuit was the right mix of tartness from the raspberry jam and buttery crunch from the biscuit. Note to self though - don't add salt to the mix if you are using salted butter.

I am sure this will be on the boys list for a while.  That whole "only one biscuit after school" rule just became quite promising.  Next weeks lemon araxi tart will have less fans I am guessing.