Combat Boredom - Jammy Biscuits

n Mondays, I have two children with me, a five month old and an inevitably bored-for-some-of-the-day three year old.  Today, to combat said boredom, satisfy my/his sweet tooth and take my mind off the fact we STILL haven’t heard from the solicitor, I took to Google to figure out what could be done to rectify the situation.  Today I'm cooking for necessity - there is no room for error here; one mistake resulting in less than perfect produce will inspire a tantrum worthy of, well, a three year old.  Anything that takes longer to do than ten minutes results in flour, butter or anything else he can get his hands on being flung about the kitchen and on to the dog.  So, no making up of recipes here!

We ended up making some deliciously gooey Jammy Biscuits to pass some time; just five ingredients and a pair of clean hands and you’re off (NB in our house clean finger nails and no sight of bogies passes for clean – his bogies that is), with lovely, time saving instructions fromhttp://www.bbcgoodfood.com.  Hard to get wrong, this forgiving dough allows little hands to abuse it and still turn out a biscuit you’d give to a friend rather than an enemy… and the fact that these particular little hands made less than perfectly shaped biscuits (those on Good Food were clearly made by, oooh, say, a five year old), makes them all the more endearing.  The only thing I’d note is to use bloody good jam – is it worth doing any less?

How to?

• Measure out 200g self-raising flour, 100g sugar (recipe calls for caster but only had granulated so it had to do) and 100g butter and get your little hands to rub
  together to make a breadcrumb like texture – ‘i said rub, not throw!’

• Finish off for them when they get bored.
• Dribble in a lightly beaten egg and get those hands in again to form a dough – I left this to the little hands – I have nice nails and I’d like to keep them that way.
• Roll said dough into a sausage about 5cm in diameter and cut into 2cm thick rounds – you’ll end up with 12 or so.
• Stick your little ones finger in the middle of each to make an indentation into which you’re going to plop a teaspoon of jam (alternating a spoon full for yourself of course).
• Put them on a baking tray, leaving a good 3cm around each one for spreadage and bake for 10-12 minutes at 190 degrees.
• I don’t need to tell you that hot jam is like molten lava, so make sure you leave them a bit before you get greedy and shove one in in one go…. erm I mean allow your little horror to eat one delicately (I’m not talking from experience here or anything…).

May your day pass a little faster, if not sweeter.