Jammy coconut mallows

It's no secret that I love baking and one of my favourite parts of baking is taking something old fashioned and easily bought in any shop and recreating it at home. For example I am always baking biscuits and lets be honest, unlike cakes and puddings, it is very easy to buy in good quality biscuits very cheaply, especially here in Britain, we love our biscuits here.
Custard creams, digestives and shortbread are firm family favourites and you can buy them in any corner shop but nothing compares to the real deal.

Flicking through this months Good food magazine I came across these mallow biscuits, a reworking on a old fashioned favourite. The original versions were a square shortbread biscuit covered in two rows of coconut dusted mini mallows with a row of raspberry jam running down the centre.
This recipe makes coconut biscuits sandwich together with jam and melted marshmallows, the biscuits are then rolled in jam and coconut, a new twist on a old favourite....a taste of my childhood.

Jammy coconut mallows

For the biscuits:
250g butter, softened
140g golden caster sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
300g plain flour
100g desiccated coconut
For the middles and coating:
about 175g raspberry jam
18 large pink and white marshmallows, cut in half across the middle
25g desiccated coconut

Heat oven to 190c/ gas 5.
Beat butter, sugar, egg and vanilla together with a pinch of salt until smooth. Fold in the flour and coconut to form a dough.

On a floured surface, shape the dough into a round, then roll to the thickness of a £1 coin. Cut into rounds using a 6cm cutter. Lift onto baking sheets, then bake for 14 minutes until light golden. Cool for a few minutes then transfer to a cooling rack.

To sandwich the biscuits, lay half out on a baking sheet, under-side up. Put half a teaspoon of jam on each one, and top with a piece of marshmallow, then bake for 2 1/2 minutes or until just melted. Remove from oven, then quickly top with the other biscuits, pressing down so that the marshmallow sticks them together and just oozes out.
Cool for 10 minutes. Put the coconut and remaining jam onto plates, dip the edges in the jam, them roll in the coconut.

These really took me back and boy, were they popular, more so with the adults than the children. These biscuits will be a regular in my biscuit tin

Strawberry jam

Before I write anything I feel I must apologise, as I have failed to blog anything for a few weeks now, life just got in the way, in a wee spare moment I decided I had to use up the strawberries sitting in the fridge before they got wasted, jam seemed the obvious answer so I turned to the gorgeous James Martin. I love James' recipes and his passion for British food, and as a jam making novice I thought his recipe would be fail safe.


This recipe, found here , simply uses preserving sugar, lemon juice and strawberries. The jam making process was straight forward and it smelled absolutely wonderful, the only problem I had with it was it didn't set quite as thick as I would have liked it, I love a thick set jam, my foodie friends on a forum I frequent advised me to boil the jam back up for 10 minutes and it should set perfectly, I did this and also added a extra half a lemon of juice to it .
This worked perfectly, a lovely thick, chunky strawberry jam.
The kids and I decided this was the most delicious jam ever, they particularly liked getting whole strawberries in their jam on toast....who wouldn't.