Kingston Biscuits

There’s something quite amazing about having a cake, biscuit or something else you love eating coming straight out of your own oven, instead of some thin plastic packaging. I love the whole process- starting with very simple ingredients like flour and sugar, slowly mixing them together to create a batter or a dough of some sort and then watching as they transform into something delicious. It’s the reason that I spend so much effort baking things which would be so much more convenient or cheaper (or perhaps, though not likely, taste better) to buy from the shops.



I love pretty much all recipes, and particularly love recipes for things I love to eat (duh!), but whenever I open up a recipe book or am reading food blogs, what draws my attention the most are recipes which attempt to recreate some dish or snack. Even if what they’re trying to recreate is something I’ve never heard of or had before- if it’s good enough that someone can be bothered trying to make it themselves at home, then I’m interested.

So after I saw these Kingston biscuits on Julia’s blog, this recipe remained in the back of my mind until I finally decided making them. You see, when I was reading the post (a year ago) I wasn’t too fond of Arnott’s Kingston biscuits. Actually, I wasn’t too sure I’d had them before, but I don’t have much of a thing for sandwiched cream biscuits (with the exception of oreos!). I guess I have to thank the supermarkets for putting these biscuits on sale- otherwise I would never have thought of buying them to try. Not only did I discover I liked them (a lot!) but so did my sister!



These Kingston biscuits are quite different as the packaged ones, but then again I guess that’s the beauty of homemade recipes- they taste similar enough that you can recognise that it to be a version of the well known biscuit but are in many other ways, so different. For one thing, these don’t look much like Kingston’s- they’re larger (mostly my fault because I didn’t realise they’d expand so much) and I guess chunkier because of the oats. They’re also less crunchy than the packaged ones, though I guess you could bake them for longer if you like your biscuits super crunchy, and they soften over the next few days to create slightly chewy cookies. And of course, they taste different. But in a good way of course.

I sandwiched these biscuits with ganache instead of chocolate because I like the smoothness of ganache but it takes quite a while for it to cool and harden completely so for the first couple of hours after sandwiching them, the biscuits sort of slide over each other and the chocolate filling is very smooth and almost runny- it’s so good! Not that they taste any less delicious when it hardens- infact, my sister likes the biscuit better the next couple of days when the cookie softens slightly. Either way, our general consensus is that these homemade Kingston’s are terribly addictive and even better than the packaged ones- we even have two untouched packaged ones sitting in our pantry to prove it!

Kingston Biscuit Recipe
Adapted from Mélanger- thanks Julia! (sorry that half of the measurements are in grams and the other half is in cups- I sorta fiddled around with the recipe as I went!)

90g butter 45g golden syrup (I used honey)
1/2 teaspoon bicarb soda
1 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup demerara sugar
1/2 cup plain flour
1 cup dessicated coconut

100g chocolate (I used dark chocolate)
80ml cream (that's all I had in my fridge- and it worked out pretty well!)

1. Preheat oven to 160C. Cream butter, sugar and golden syrup until pale and fluffy.
2. Add flour, bicarb soda, coconut and rolled oats, and beat on slow speed until just combined.
3. Drop teaspoons of mixture onto paper lined trays. Bake in oven for 15 minutes or golden.
4. For the filling, Combine chocolate and cream in a small heatproof bowl; stir with metal spoon over pan of simmering water until melted and smooth. Refrigerate until spreadable then sandwich biscuits together. Can be kept in an airtight container for up to 5 days.