These are truly delicious eggless little biscuits, crunchy and fragrant and lovely in their size.
They work very well with a cup of coffee or tea and they are so small that you don’t feel too guilty when you eat two or three in a row.
For this recipe we used our Zappoh! saffron (ça va sans dire) and some excellent pistachios we bought from Pepita & Grano, a wonderful packaging- free and zero waste shop in Florence.
We found this lovely recipe on the Artisanal Food Trail site.
For approx. 30 biscuits
3 tablespoons milk
a pinch of Zappoh! saffron
½ teaspoon ground cardamom
60 gr butter (room temperature)
90 gr cane sugar
125 gr. plain flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
60 gr semolina
40 gr coarsely chopped pistachios
First of all, crush the saffron threads: in a pestle and mortar, if you happen to have one, or wrapped in a small square of baking paper, using a glass or glass jar.
In a small saucepan heat the milk, without reaching boiling point; transfer the powdered saffron and the hot milk in a small cup, cover with a saucer or a small piece of clingfilm and let steep as long as you can, from 45 minutes up to 48 hours (but after 24 hours put the cup in the fridge).
When your saffron is ready, cream the butter with the sugar; add the powdered cardamom, the flour, the baking powder, the semolina and, finally, the saffron milk. If everything looks too dry, add a little bit of milk.
Wrap the dough in clingfilm and put it in the fridge for half an hour; in the meantime, preheat the oven at 180° C.
Start rolling the dough between two sheets of clingfilm, lift the top sheet and scatter the pistachios, put the clingfilm back in position and keep on rolling: your dough should be ½ cm thick.
With a 4 cm round biscuit cutter, cut your biscuits, gathering and rolling the remaining dough until it is used up.
Put your biscuits on a baking tray, leave 3 cm between them and bake for 12/13 minutes (but check out after 10: oven are soooo different). Your biscuits should be pale golden beauties.
Let them dry on a wire rack and then transfer them into a tin or an airtight container, where they should keep for 4/5 days with no problem whatsoever (to be honest, we don’t guarantee, because after 3 days we had eaten all of them!).