Butter-less Tea Biscuits

Blog's Category: My Staple Food

Butter-less Tea Biscuits



Intro

While I have absolutely nothing against butter in any application, I like this recipe for its "olive oil only" nature because its easy to make something delicious with butter  - go try to make something delicious without! Especially baked goods. Back in Ukraine, we even had folk words loosely translated as "you can't make kasha worse by adding more butter". So, having tasty tea biscuits  loaded with raisins, nuts without butter sounded like real discovery to me.  Here it is - butter-less raisin and nuts orange flavored tea biscuits.

Variations

- Any kind of jam, or any nuts or any dry fruits can be used here in place of apricot jam, raisin and walnuts. All other, for best results, is pretty much "written in stone".

Taste Description

Those biscuits are very-very flavorful, orange flavor is a key flavor here. Raisin, apricot jam and nuts are building block to add to the orange flavor. They also create beautiful texture - it's chewy and crumbly at the same time.

How to Serve

It has to be accompanied by tea (hence the name!), or coffee, or milk. Great for "hurry-up" breakfast or afternoon tea-time. Great to be sneaked up by by-passers in an office or in your home kitchen, from a cookie jar.

Butter-less Tea Biscuits

 

For about 24 cookie-size biscuits: 

4 c all-purpose flour
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 c brown sugar
1/2 c light olive oil
juice from 1 orange
zest from 2-3 oranges
3 eggs
vanilla
2 c apricot jam
2 cups chopped walnuts
2 cups raisins


- In a separate bowl, pour boiling water over the raisins and set it stay for about 20 minutes.- Meanwhile, chop your walnuts (if you have whole ones). I use meat tenderizer to accomplish the task (see pictures below).
- Drain raisins and let them dry out a little bit on a paper towel.
- Using microplane take zest off oranges. Take a juice from one orange.
- Mix orange zest and apricot jam together in a separate bowl.
- In your largest bowl, mix together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar.
- In a separate bowl, mix eggs, olive oil, orange juice and vanilla.
- Add egg mix to flour mix and make a dough. Do not over-mix it, just make sure ingredients are well mixed. Separate a dough into equal 4 pieces. With your hands, make each one into flat circle and cover with a plastic wrap.
- Take one piece of dough, and roll in out on a floured surface into rectangle about 1/4" thick.
- Spread about 1/2 cup of apricot jam with orange zest over. Sprinkle with 1/4 of all your walnuts and 1/4 of all your raisins.
- Roll it up and tap it lightly to shape into nice even roll.
- With a sharp knife, cut roll up into separate pieces.
- Place biscuits in a slightly oiled baking sheet.
- Repeat using all dough pieces.
- Bake in preheated oven at 350F until golden (in my oven it took about 30-40 minutes).
- Enjoy!
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IN PICTURES

You may notice some butter on a background: for the sake of experimentation, I smudged one roll over with a soft butter before spreading a jam. Guess what? There was absolutely no difference in taste between one with butter and rest of a biscuits which were made without any butter. Then why to bother [with butter], why?