I made a batch. I used exactly the quantities specified. My pinches of salt are probably larger than average. I mixed the flour, salt, ginger and NaHCO3 together and sifted them. I used a soft cake/pastry (wheat) flour and good-quality European butter. My ground ginger is rather old and probably less flavourful than it should be. I cooked them for about 14.5 minutes at 170 degrees in a fan oven; they are probably somewhat overbaked.
They’re nice biscuits. They’re definitely not obvious improvements on (good home-made) chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter cookies (I make these but add 100g of chopped-up dark chocolate), or Ottolenghi-style “florentines” (which are not in any useful sense florentines but are delicious). Mine came out a little greasy, perhaps as a consequence of overbaking (or maybe my butter has a higher-than-usual fat content?).
If I’m comparing against other home-made biscuits, I think a sufficient explanation for the fact that these haven’t taken over the world is that they aren’t obvious improvements on other sorts. (Though they do take less effort to make than many others.)
If I’m comparing against mass-produced shop-bought biscuits, I think it’s the factors other people have mentioned: good home-made biscuits will not stay good on the shelves for months, and they use relatively expensive ingredients.
[EDITED to add:] In view of Pazzaz’s comment that they’re much better when warm: I had some more several hours later. They aren’t obviously much worse (though I wasn’t eating them straight out of the oven to begin with) but I will say that they seem a bit dull. Perfectly tasty, quitte more-ish, but not all that interesting. If I made them again, I might use treacle in place of golden syrup, darker sugar (I used half “golden caster” and half “light brown soft”; caster(UK) = superfine(US)), more spices, etc.
Further update: today my wife ate one and said, unprompted, “These are good.” She is not usually given to such outbursts of enthusiasm :-). I asked whether she likes them better than other kinds of biscuit I make (which I think are particularly good, else I wouldn’t bother making them) and she said maybe. She specifically disagreed with my judgement that they’re a bit boring. So, one data point in favour of the hypothesis that for some people these are unusually tasty biscuits.
I made a batch. I used exactly the quantities specified. My pinches of salt are probably larger than average. I mixed the flour, salt, ginger and NaHCO3 together and sifted them. I used a soft cake/pastry (wheat) flour and good-quality European butter. My ground ginger is rather old and probably less flavourful than it should be. I cooked them for about 14.5 minutes at 170 degrees in a fan oven; they are probably somewhat overbaked.
They’re nice biscuits. They’re definitely not obvious improvements on (good home-made) chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter cookies (I make these but add 100g of chopped-up dark chocolate), or Ottolenghi-style “florentines” (which are not in any useful sense florentines but are delicious). Mine came out a little greasy, perhaps as a consequence of overbaking (or maybe my butter has a higher-than-usual fat content?).
If I’m comparing against other home-made biscuits, I think a sufficient explanation for the fact that these haven’t taken over the world is that they aren’t obvious improvements on other sorts. (Though they do take less effort to make than many others.)
If I’m comparing against mass-produced shop-bought biscuits, I think it’s the factors other people have mentioned: good home-made biscuits will not stay good on the shelves for months, and they use relatively expensive ingredients.
[EDITED to add:] In view of Pazzaz’s comment that they’re much better when warm: I had some more several hours later. They aren’t obviously much worse (though I wasn’t eating them straight out of the oven to begin with) but I will say that they seem a bit dull. Perfectly tasty, quitte more-ish, but not all that interesting. If I made them again, I might use treacle in place of golden syrup, darker sugar (I used half “golden caster” and half “light brown soft”; caster(UK) = superfine(US)), more spices, etc.
Further update: today my wife ate one and said, unprompted, “These are good.” She is not usually given to such outbursts of enthusiasm :-). I asked whether she likes them better than other kinds of biscuit I make (which I think are particularly good, else I wouldn’t bother making them) and she said maybe. She specifically disagreed with my judgement that they’re a bit boring. So, one data point in favour of the hypothesis that for some people these are unusually tasty biscuits.
Thanks for contributing data! :D