March 12, 2007: Ginger Driblet Biscuits

My paternal grandparents stimulate got spent their lives working their farm inwards the Lockyer Valley, westward of Brisbane. While it has been a demanding too unglamourous beingness for them, my family's weekend visits were a process for a suburban fry such every bit I. Playing on the dormant tractors, feeding the cows onetime pumpkins from the dorsum of the ute, riding a wheel unsupervised on the route with my cousin, eating Cocopops for breakfast. The biggest process of all was 'smoko': mid-morning too -afternoon breaks comprising home-made biscuits or slices, plates of pikelets amongst jam too cream (rosella jam, please!), pumpkin scones amongst plump sultanas too thick slabs of butter (Flo's ain recipe, of course of education - we're inwards Joh country) or perhaps, if nosotros were actually lucky, a freshly baked chocolate cake, iced neatly on altitude too sides. Dinner too tea were corned beef too veges boiled too salted beyond recognition. Pasta was 'ethnic' food. My adult vegetarian diet takes almost nix inspiration from her dinners, but Grandma excelled at homely baked treats too these are what a sweeth-toothed fry volition think best.

Ginger biscuits were 1 of the recurring offerings at my Grandma's table. Flat, dark-brown too chewy, they were known every bit 'cow pats'. It was exclusively in conclusion year, spell visiting my widowed grandmother inwards her unit of measurement inwards Town, that I finally copied downward her recipe for ginger drib biscuits (so that's what the civilised folk telephone outcry upwards them!). It was a piece of yellowed newsprint inwards a scrapbook, in all likelihood older than my dad. I'll give yous the recipe inwards its master copy form, though it won't surprise yous to know that I replaced the prescribed dripping amongst the equivalent mensurate of butter. I also substituted black-strap molasses for the treacle, since it was what I had on hand. My batch rose higher too were lighter than the biscuits I recall, but the intended serving of reminiscence was only correct (for me anyway - maybe you're feeling sick amongst sticky-sweetness past times now!). After all, I've been making these for Ellie's nostalgia-themed weblog event. The added bonus is a calendar week of packing a piece of my past times into a lunchbox for afternoon smoko.

Ginger drib biscuits/Cow pats
makes almost sixteen large biscuits

1 loving cup sugar
4 tablespoons dripping
2 eggs
2 tablespoons treacle
2 cups flour
1 tablespoon ginger
2 teaspoons baking powder

Beat carbohydrate too dripping together until white, add together eggs too treacle. Sift inwards flour, ginger too baking powder. Mix thoroughly too drib onto a greased slide. Bake inwards moderate oven (mine took almost 10 minutes). Allow the biscuits to educate earlier removing them from the slide.