Don’t you love it when you find a recipe that you know will become a firm favourite? And, even better when it’s easy to make.

Conversely, how frustrating is it when you find a taste you love but can’t find the recipe? Or worse, the maker won’t share the recipe. This happened at a favourite café the other day when a friend asked what was in the salad dressing. The response, “can’t tell you, it’s a trade secret”. Really? I’m not sure what they thought we were going to do, make litres of it and sell it? Set up in opposition across the road? In my book, it’s a slightly precious and old school response. Particularly in this age of café cook books and chefs on telly. Maybe it really was a “trade secret” and they’d bought the dressing? We’ll never know, silly response never-the-less (but, I won’t stop going there!).

Fortunately, the gorgeous people at Biscuiteers – a London-based biscuit gift company, café and icing school – have published a book, do share their recipes and give great tips on how to decorate the biscuits you’ve created at home. Yay for them I say. And, thanks to them, I had the perfect take home gift for Master Four’s party (you’ll remember how much I hate goodie bags).

One of the fantastic things about this recipe is that it makes loads, so you can throw the extra dough in the freezer pre-rolled and whip up biscuits at a moment’s notice.

This is based on Biscuiteers plain biscuit recipe – their book has a range of recipe variants. Their recipe calls for part self-raising flour, but I didn’t have it so used plain flour with baking powder and I also cut back a little on sugar.

What you’ll need

450g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

100g caster sugar

125g butter, at room temperature, cubed

120g golden syrup

1 egg, at room temperature

Lemon rind

How to make them

Sift the flour and baking powder together. Mix in the sugar. Either rub in the butter with your fingers until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs or use a mixer to do the work for you.

Make a well in the centre and add in the lightly beaten egg and golden syrup. Because golden syrup is hard to measure, I put the mixing bowl on to the scales and measure that way. Add in the lemon rind.

Mix together until a ball forms.

Cut the mixture into three, then roll out between two sheets of baking paper until about 5mm thick. Pop the rolled dough into the fridge for about half an hour. You may need a little (note, just a tiny amount) of flour for the rolling process – I didn’t. Repeat until you’ve used all the dough.

Heat oven to 170C.  Line trays with baking paper.

Take one piece of rolled dough out of the fridge and cut with the shape of your choice. Pop onto the prepared trays and bake for 14-18 minutes. {I baked two trays at a time at around 150C fan bake for about 12-14 minutes.)

Remove from the oven and cool on trays. When completely cold, store in airtight containers.

Biscuiteers give easy decorating instructions. I won’t fully detail them here, but will give the basics. Make a royal icing. Pipe around the outside of the biscuits with plain nozzle. Leave to dry for about 10 minutes.

Then ‘flood’ with watered down royal icing. To do this, add some drops of cold water into the icing to give a thick running cream consistency. Pour into a ‘squeezy bottle’ and carefully ‘flood’ the biscuit to fill it.

One of the best hints I got from the book was to dry out the biscuits so they stay crunchy. Once they have largely dried, pop them back into a very slow oven 50-70C for about 30 minutes. This is for larger biscuits – for small ones with a small amount of icing, I put them in the oven at 50C for about 15 minutes.

Ensure they are completely cooled and dry before storing in air tight containers.

That’s all there is to it. They were an absolute hit at the party – both the tiny at-the-party bikkies (great for coffee dunking as well) and the take-home larger ones. Thanks Biscuiteers, you’re a ‘must visit’ on my next trip to London.