Kingston Biscuits or Cookies are a favourite biscuit or cookie in Australia but did you know that you can make these at home too? When you bake homemade Kingston biscuits you can use good quality milk chocolate and browned butter and vanilla to make them even more special! And they're easy too - think a cousin of the ANZAC biscuit sandwiched with milk chocolate! This is a pushy recipe Dear Reader.
For anyone outside of Australia and New Zealand, ANZAC biscuits are one of the easiest oatmeal biscuits to make. They're a mix, roll and bake type of biscuit that doesn't require any resting time and are made with oats, flour, coconut, sugar and butter. They are named after the ANZAC troops in World War I. Homemade Kingston biscuits are so delicious and when you use browned butter, vanilla and good quality chocolate they're even better than bought.
Tips For Making Kingston Biscuits
1 - Kingston biscuits are essentially like ANZAC biscuits sandwiched with milk chocolate. They do not require any eggs so they're great for anyone with an egg free diet. They can also be made dairy free by subbing a vegan butter and using dark chocolate. They're absolutely delicious and really very much the pick of a cookie/biscuit assortment in an office.
2 - Browned butter is very, very easy to make. I make a whole batch of it and keep it in my fridge for when I will need it. My recipe for homemade browned butter is here.
3 - Kingston biscuits are actually quite small in size and are quite dainty. So while you'll be rolling these out quite small they do spread. This makes a large quantity of biscuits.
4 - To sandwich the cookies with the chocolate you want to melt the chocolate and then let it thicken and firm up a little until it is spreadable but still liquid. This just requires waiting for this to happen. Then once you've dolloped some chocolate let this set a bit further before adding the top half. If you add the top half too early then the chocolate will seep out the sides with the weight of the top of the cookie.
5 - These cookies keep for up to 1 week in an airtight container in the fridge or on the counter
I made these Kingston biscuits one weekend where things were very busy. I always find October to December to be the busiest time of the year mainly because Christmas is coming up. It was a Saturday morning and I wanted to make an elaborate cake but first I was going to make some soup using a turkey carcass that I had leftover from the roast turkey. It still had lots of meat on it and I had some vegetables put aside for it. I took out my pressure cooker which would do the job in a quarter of the time. When I tried to get the bowl out of hte unit to fill with water it was very tight and it was a bit hard to get it out. My brow furrowed. Nothing like that had ever happened before and I had owned the unit for 10 or so years, even more.
I don't know about you Dear Reader but I have a fear of pressure cookers. I love how fast they are but I also do not want to be in the same room while they do their thing because I don't need any explosions happening around me. So I set it to go and went upstairs to work out. Half an hour later I had expected to hear a pinging but there wasn't that familiar tone so I went downstairs. The pressure cooker was letting steam out the whole time even though it was not supposed to. I turned it off and tried to release steam but none came out. I tried to remove the lid but it was firmly stuck.
The biggest danger is trying to open a pressure cooker before the pressure has been removed or you get an explosion. I didn't want turkey bits all over my curtains or my kitchen so I searched for a solution online. They said to not force it open and to let it cool. The helpline was only available from Monday to Friday during business hours (which seems counterintuitive for a consumer product!). So I asked on Instagram whether people had any suggestions. Some had had the same issue, other suggested other things that unfortunately didn't work. Also a good number of people asked me to please keep them updated about it. "Is this a season cliffhanger ending?" said one person while another girl said, "I'm so in for this story. Can't wait to see what happens, I'm so invested!". It took a good 12 hours for it to cool down and even then the top wouldn't release easily with one hand (as they instruct).
I was in no frame of mind to make this elaborate cake, especially if I had a pressure cooker situation so I switched to my favourite version of Kingston biscuits. I find baking these Kingston biscuits so soothing because not only are they easy, they're tiny and dainty and delicious biscuits or cookies. There's something meditative about weighing and rolling small balls of cookie dough and baking them and then sandwiching them with chocolate. I thoroughly recommend baking these on a day where things are going wrong and you want something to go right. Plus did I mention how delicious these are?
Oh and an update: on the Monday I rang the helpline again, got put on hold and then disconnected, rang back and selected the sales number (I always find choosing sales gets a faster response than support) and then finally got a hold of a woman. She told me that it was now safe to open it up. Mr NQN opened it and inside was the congealing, slimy, smelly mess of a turkey carcass. He threw it out straight away in the outside bin!
So tell me Dear Reader, have you ever had a pressure cooker issue before? And which Arnott's biscuit is your favourite?
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