Sour Cherry & Pistachio Crocodile Biscuits

Oh yeah. Crocodile shaped biscuits, flavoured with freeze dried sour cherries and coated with pistachio pieces.

So I know it's been a little while since my last post (or it feels like it). What have I been doing? Mostly preparing to move to Birmingham and start my new job. As previously mentioned, I'm incredibly happy to be finally leaving the Cambridgeshire Fens, and it feels like a new chapter of my life is about to begin. Since we last spoke, I've been hunting out and buying my first real furniture (I'm not counting my £30 book case, nor my £20 hat stand) and dealing with general moving house admin, like sorting bills and addresses out. It's all felt like quite the whirlwind, and has kept me pretty occupied, but I of course still found time to bake these biscuits.

I never had a very standard cookie cutter collection. Until my trip to Sweden in June, I only had a dinosaur and a heart. Now I also have a reindeer, a moose, a turtle and a crocodile. So... still not a standard collection, but a more varied one at least. Circles are boring, anyway; I prefer to think outside of the biscuit tin.

...Moving on from that attempt at a pun, these biscuits were very popular. The freeze-dried cherry flavour came through very well, and was complimented excellently by the pistachios. I'm not sure whether I like the white chocolate chip eyes that I gave the crocodiles, so I'll let you have the final decision on whether to use them or not. I found the cutters in Sweden, as mentioned earlier, but I'm sure any animal (or indeed any shape at all) would work just as well.

Makes Approx. 20

Ingredients

• 2 Tbsp Freeze Dried Sour Cherry Powder
• 175g Plain Flour
• 80g Caster Sugar
• 120g Butter
• 1 Egg Yolk
• 3 Tbsp Milk
• 100g Ground Pistachios (this may be a gross miscalculation - use best judgement)

Recipe

• Put the freeze dried cherry powder, plain flour and sugar in a bowl and stir well. 
• Add the butter and rub into the flour mixture with the fingertips until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
• Stir in the egg yolk and milk; the mixture should form a firm dough.
• Alternatively place the dry ingredients and butter in a food processor and process until well mixed. Add the milk and egg yolk, then process again until the mixture forms a ball of dough.
• Wrap the dough in cling film and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
• Roll out the dough on a floured surface (after removing the cling film) to about 1cm thickness. 
• Cut out crocodile shapes using the cutter. Transfer the crocodiles to baking trays that are lined with baking parchment, then roll out the remaining dough and repeat until there is not enough left for another crocodile. Don't worry about putting too much space between the crocodiles, as the biscuits don't spread in the oven.
• Cover the baking trays with cling film and refrigerate for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 200C/180C fan.
• Remove the cling film and bake the biscuits in the oven for 10-15 minutes, or until they begin to firm up and turn slightly golden. They won't firm up completely in the oven; this happens as they cool.
• Immediately after removing from the oven, sprinkle the biscuits with ground pistachio. Be as sparing or as liberal as you see fit.
• Transfer to a wire rack and allow to cool.

Kat from The Baking Explorer runs Treat Petite with Stuart from Cakeyboi, and this month's challenge is to bake something that was made on Great British Bake Off. I have to confess that GBBO isn't really my thing and I have never watched it, but since Kat suggested that I enter I will trust that these biscuits fit into the theme.