The Vicomte in the Kitchen: Brown Snaps

Brown Snaps aka Ginger Nuts

category: recipe, from The Vicomte in the Kitchen, a cookbook by:

Vicomte de Mauduit

published by James Clarke & Co, original copyright 1933

Agamedes' opinion: 7 out of 10... simple & tasty

This cookbook is one of my favourites. Recipes with simple -- obscure -- directions. For meals which, quite often, I have never heard of. Some... I can't even imagine what the finished meal should look like!

Brown snaps, though... are ginger nuts. I know what the packet version looks like. I have successfully cooked the Vicomte's brown snaps. Here's what you need:

• 1 1/2 lb flour, 1/2 lb butter, 3/4 lb treacle, 3/4 lb sugar, 1 oz cinnamon, 1 1/2 teaspoonfuls ground ginger.

Some of the world has now converted to metric... I tried to do the conversions in my head. Then I realised, I only want to make a small number of these biscuits.

Did I mention, brown snaps are biscuits?

First, though, I spread butter over a baking tray and turned the oven on. 180 degrees C, fan forced.

I put a mixing bowl on the electronic scales and reset the display to zero. Added enough flour to look about right, for the quantity of biscuits I was after. Added a fraction more, up to 180 grams... Other ingredients would go in, in proportion to the flour. So:

• One and a half pounds of flour. That's three half pounds... Call that, "3" of flour. Plain flour or self-raising? I think it was plain, the label has fallen off our container. I had weighed out 180 grams.
  
• "1" of butter. That is, if flour is 3, butter is just 1, or one third the weight. 60 grams. Straight from the fridge, so I softened it in the microwave.
  
• Three quarters of a pound is half of one and a half pounds. "1.5" of treacle -- 90 grams -- surprisingly heavy for its volume. By the way, if you think that treacle is just like golden syrup -- you'll get a nasty surprise if you lick up the excess treacle!
  
• 3/4 lb sugar. "1.5", 90 grams of sugar. White sugar? Some ginger nut recipes use syrup and brown sugar -- which would probably average out to the same flavour as treacle and white sugar.
  
• 1 oz -- one ounce -- cinnamon? My proportion method failed, I added a scoop, plus a bit...
  
• ... and the same rough quantity, more or less, of ground ginger. All very inexact.
  

Cooking involves some science -- and a lot of art. If the quantities are wrong -- adjust for the next time!

I put everything in the one bowl -- and mixed.

After a while, I mixed by hand. So much more effective!

The instructions from the Vicomte read, "Bake lightly, and take out of the oven while still soft." That's it, that's all. No mix instructions, no shaping, no temperature, no time. Typical of the Vicomte!

I rolled up balls of biscuit mix, perhaps the size of a walnut. Possible lesson from another recipe: put the mix in the fridge to cool, before shaping into biscuits. I'll try that, next time. I may also try to make the biscuit mix balls into a more standard size...

Roll, flatten, place on greased tray. Roll, flatten, place. Roll, flatten... you get the idea...

Our oven has a light which is permanently on. I could see the biscuits. They did seem to be cooking.

After about twelve minutes -- after taking in some washing and picking some fruit -- I decided that the biscuits were cooked. Took them out, tasted, decided -- cooked.

A nice simple recipe. Quick and easy (if you already have the treacle and other ingredients!). The biscuits are nice. And I think they could be even nicer, with a bit of practice.

A successful recipe from The Vicomte in the Kitchen

..o0o..

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