Friday, January 07, 2011

Sweet sweet Friday: Hokey Pokey Biscuits

Have you ever noticed how things that you admire as rustic and charmingly old-fashioned in other cultures are often dismissed as deadly dull in your own? Take these biscuits, for example. They come from the Edmonds Cookbook, which was first published in 1908 as a marketing tool for Edmonds 'Sure To Rise' baking powder. Since then it has become the biggest selling book ever published in New Zealand and most households have a copy - the lucky ones still have their grandmother's annotated copy with its tissue-thin pages.
I have a modern edition, which I rarely use because many of its dishes (using horrors like packet soup and sausage meat) seem rather old-fashioned and out of touch with the sort of food I cook. But its baking recipes cannot be faulted, especially if you're after a nostalgia hit.


Hokey Pokey Biscuits (from the Edmonds Classics Cookbook)
These hokey pokey biscuits have humble ingredients and would never win a beauty pageant. But they have a deliciously buttery, caramel flavour and their very simplicity seems to make them extremely modern.
They would also be good as an accompaniment to hokey pokey ice cream...

125g butter
1/2 cup sugar
1Tbsp golden syrup
1Tbsp milk
1 1/2 cups plain flour
1tsp baking soda

Preheat the oven to 180C. Combine butter, sugar, golden syrup and milk in a saucepan over low heat. Stir until the butter is melted and the mixture nearly boiling. Remove from heat and let cool to lukewarm (about five minutes). Sift the flour and baking soda together, then add to the cooled mixture and mix well. Roll tablespoons of the mixture into balls and place on lightly greased oven trays. Flatten with a floured fork and bake for about 15 minutes, until golden brown. Cool on a rack and store in an airtight tin. Makes about 18.

Do you have an end of the week baking treat or a classic favourite? Post it below to share the sweetness of Fridays... Pin It

16 comments:

  1. I love the name. it makes me want to dance. I think they're charming.

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  2. The biscuits look delicious and easy to make. Happy to follow your blog for more food ideas in the future :D

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  3. I love the sound of these biscuits. Sometimes simplicity is the best! And let's face it; anything that contains golden syrup has to be good?

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  4. Any biscuit containing golden syrup is alright with me! These look great

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  5. I'm adding my vote to these ones, that name is brill for a cookie. If I had one of these and a cuppa right now happiness would not be far away at all ;0)

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  6. Hello Lucy! Thank you so much for stopping by my blog! - so much fun to meet you and discover your beautiful blog. :-)

    I just adore these special cookies that you are sharing....the name is just precious and I love the idea that the ingredients are so simple!

    Happy 2011! :-)

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  7. These look ideal for making with my daughters, who are wanting to bake more themselves - as long as I get to lick the spoon ;-) They look just like the kind my granny used to make, too. Full of memories. The best is the most simple!

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  8. I'm all for simplicity....less is more...and the little fork marks look cool....Plain biscuit recipes are really useful to make up more complicated deserts from and my husband is a real biscuit lover so I'll have to have a go at these......when we've finished off the mince pies!!

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  9. Charming little cookies, indeed. I love looking through old cookbooks. It's not only fun to revamp older recipes for our "newfangled" tastes, but sometimes it's great to simply rediscover old favorites.

    Visually, these cookies remind me of the peanut butter cookies my mom made when I was a girl. She always gave them the pretty little fork prints!

    Love your blog!

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  10. Lovely little tea biscuits on a lovely little plate! Thanks, Lucy for stopping by my humble little blog! It's always nice to have new visitors! I look forward to hanging out here a lot more in the New Year!

    And yes, Lo! They DO look like the peanut butter cookies that we had as children!

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  11. You had me at "buttery, caramel flavour" mmmm! These look lovely, even if I have never heard of hokey pokey ice-cream or biscuits! :) Nice plate, by the way!

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  12. Thanks everyone - I really hope you do take the time to make these humble little biscuits as they're definitely worth it. And the plate is one of my favourites, not least because I found it at a garage sale for a dollar!

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  13. They look delicious - not too fancy - just perfect for this time of the year.

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  14. And there was I thinking there would be bits of honeycomb in the biscuits - mmm, quite like that idea.

    Lovely plate.

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  15. Don't you just love old cookbooks? They are so much fun to look through, even if some of the ingredients are "ick", lol. Your cookies though look absolutely scrumptious!! Thank you so much for linking up to Cookbook Sundays and I'm going to go link up to your blog hop right now! Have a great week!

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  16. Love the sound of these, but what could I sub for the golden syrup? thanks.

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Hello - thanks for stopping by. If this was real life I'd make you a cup of tea and open the biscuit tin, but in lieu of those things, let's have a chat anyway...