My absolute favourite biscuits ever in Gluten Free form! I love Empire Biscuits and can’t get enough of them. So when I planned to test out some GF recipes from Becky Excell’s fantastic books, my heart leapt with excitement when I saw she had created a recipe for Empire Biscuits.

Although I am not GF myself, I am finding more and more people are needing to be GF. I thought I would start trying out a few recipes to help extend my baking repertoire so that I can offer more alternatives to those who need it.

The “feel” of how the biscuit dough came together and rolled out worked so much better than the regular dough. All I needed to add to my regular vanilla shortbread roll out biscuit recipe was some Xanthan gum. The plain flour was simply substituted for GF plain flour. The only downside was the sheer cost of how much the flour costs compared to regular flour!

The biscuits took a little bit longer to bake but apart from that I can’t tell the difference between GF and regular Empire Biscuits. That should be the case- why should GF food taste horrible and look different?

I managed to break one of the single biscuits when transferring it from the baking tray to the rack. Why does that happen? I was being careful as well! Anyway, it gave me the perfect excuse to eat one. It tasted really fresh and buttery.

Once completely cooled, I started to sandwich the biscuits together. I used some seedless raspberry jam. The icing is a simple glacé icing but for this one I used some Sugar and Crumbs’ Toasted Marshmallow flavoured icing sugar. It was in my stash from Christmas and the bag needed finishing up.

Most of the time my Empire Biscuits are decorated with jelly tots but I used some glacé cherries this time. I know they’re not everyone’s cup of tea but I love them!

I was really pleased when these turned out well so they’ll definitely be on the SmartCookieSam Gluten Free Menu in the future!

Happy Baking!

Love Sam xx