I've often featured recipes created by Loseley Butter here on my blog, many of which are great for baking with the kids, and that was exactly what we decided to do when we received a couple of tubs of Loseley butter to review. I have to say that it looks more like a margarine than a butter, being easy to spread straight from the fridge. Loseley explain that it is butter all the same, saying : "Loseley Summer Meadow Butter is a great tasting easier spreading butter. We use only the very
best summer butter from specially selected dairy herds to ensure
improved spreadability and great taste. 100% natural butter from cows fed on luscious summer meadows." Taste-wise, on bread or toast, I found it slightly bland but I think that's because we're used to eating the salted sticks of butter favoured in Brittany where Madhouse Daddy Mike hails from. I got around this by adding salt, for example, topping my baked potato with Loseley Summer Meadow butter and sprinkling with the Coriander & Rose Petal Salt that I reviewed here.
For cooking it is absolutely ideal though because you can use it straight from the fridge, even for creaming with sugar, without breaking your wrist ! We decided to make Orange and Lemon Biscuits, using the recipe from Steenbergs' website (here) and the Orange and Lemon Extracts that they had sent us to try out.
Here's the recipe, that I found on Steenbergs' website (http://www.steenbergs.co.uk/recipes/show/324/lemon-biscuits) :
Lemon Biscuits
Delicious zesty biscuits, with a yummy chewiness from the lemon extract
Ingredients
- 8oz butter, softened
- 4oz caster sugar
- 10 oz self-raising flour
- 2 tsp Steenbergs Organic Lemon Extract
- 2 tbsp Steenbergs Organic Lemon Sugar
Method
- Pre-heat oven to 180oC/Gas Mark 4 and lightly grease 2 baking trays.
- Beat the sugar and softened butter together with a wooden spoon and gradually add the flour.
- Add the lemon extract and mix in.
- Shape the dough into balls (about the size of a walnut) and place onto a baking tray, pressing down with a fork.
- Sprinkle liberally with lemon sugar and then bake for 10-15 minutes until pale golden.
- Cool on a wire rack and then enjoy!
After creaming the butter and sugar together - so much easier than usual ! - Juliette started mixing in the flour.
I split it into two bowls so that I could add Orange Extract to one half and Lemon Extract to the other. Maybe I should rename them St Clements Cookies !
The cookie dough was a bit dry so the sunflower oil in the Steenberg extracts was ideal for making it lovely and supple and soft. Pierre enjoyed having a little stir.
Each half of the cookie dough made 12 biscuits, which Pierre and Juliette had fun shaping in the baking trays.
Ten minutes later, they were ready and the kitchen smelt wonderfully citrussy. Orange biscuits with milk chocolate letters and numbers and Lemon biscuits with white chocolate decorations, just to differentiate them. Oh and a plateful of cherry buns because I decided to get all retro - total blast from the past that reminded me of school cookery lessons !
The biscuits are lovely and crumbly, reminding me of the Byron Bay Bakehouse Butterbursts that we reviewed here. Wow, homemade biscuits that look and taste shopbought - I impressed myself !
The kids did mention that the lemon and orange extract made their tongue zing but they nevertheless happily munched their way through them.
Final verdict on the Loseley - it's brilliant for cooking, both because it is so easy to cream straight from the fridge and secondly because it gives a richer, deeper, more buttery flavour to the biscuits than margarine would.
star rating : 4/5
RRP : £1.39 for 250g
for more information : http://www.loseley.com/pages/loseley/Loseley+Summer+Meadow+Butter
for more information on Steenbergs Organic Extracts, see my blogpost here : http://madhousefamilyreviews.blogspot.fr/2012/05/steenbergs-organic-extracts-lemon.html
Disclosure : We received two tubs of Loseley Summer Meadow Butter to try out.
Other blogposts you may be interested in :
Those cookies look lush!
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