Honey Cardamom Biscuits

Honey, in its purest sense, is an energy source for bees. Lucky for us, its lovely sweet stickiness is a beautiful way to liven up biscuits, cakes and slices. It helps to bind dry mixtures and add a natural organic sweetness.

All different types of honey will vary in flavour. This is because bees will only visit one type of flower on each visit, thus beekeepers will choose a site for the hives dominated by one specific plant species to produce a specific type of honey.

In Australia, the most common varieties of honey are red gum and eucalypt. Although for this recipe, I have used local unprocessed Badgingarra honey.

Honey Cardamom Biscuits
(Makes 30)

200g unsalted butter
150g caster (superfine) sugar
3 tbsp honey
250g plain flour
1 tspn baking powder
80g ground almonds
2 tspn ground cardamom

Preheat your oven to 170C/325F and line two baking trays with baking paper (or greaseproof paper).

Sif the flour, baking powder and cardamom into a bowl then stir in the ground almonds.

Over medium heat (or in a microwave) melt the butter, sugar and honey. After a minute or two, the sugar will dissolve (and you won't be able to hear the sugar crystals scraping along the bottom of the saucepan when you stir the mixture!)

Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture and stir well. Roll small balls of the mixture (about three quarters of the size of a golf ball) and place them onto the baking trays. Flatten the balls slightly with the palm of your hand then bake the biscuits for about 15 minutes. They will turn a lovely golden colour when they're ready. If they still look pale after 15 minutes, leave them in the oven a little longer.

Let the biscuits cool on the trays for a minute or two before transferring them to a wire rack to cool. The point of this is that the biscuits will be meltingly soft when they first come out of the oven, if you try to move them without letting them cool a little first, they will fall apart when you touch them.

These biscuits keep extremely well (about 10 days!) in an airtight container or biscuit jar.