Great Garibaldi Biscuits in Minutes

Garibaldi biscuits (cookies) are a very tasty sandwich of light pastry with a squashed raisin filling. They are a very popular item in the store, but you can make them at home for a fraction of the cost of the store-bought variety (I am talking myself out of business again - oh well ...). Here is how I made mine.

Ingredients

• 1 cup self-raising flour
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 scoop raisins
• 1 egg
• Salt, milk

Preparation

• Rub the butter into the flour until smooth then stir in the sugar
• Add a very small amount of milk to make a workable dough
• Roll out the dough on a floured board until very thin. If you can keep the rolled dough rectangular in shape that's great, otherwise trim it into a neat rectangle
• Cut the rolled dough into two equal parts
• Squash the raisins with a rolling pin then spread them onto one of the two pieces of rolled dough
• Place the other piece of rolled dough on top of the raisins to make a raisin sandwich
• Roll the sandwich with a rolling pin until it is once again very thin 
• Score the surface of the sandwich about half way through with a knife to make a pattern of evenly sized rectangles (break along these score lines to separate the biscuits after baking)
• Brush the top of the sandwich with whisked egg (this gives the biscuits a very attractive golden colour)
• Bake at 400F on a greased baking tray until golden (about 20 minutes)

John's Notes
I made two batches of Garibaldi because I goofed on the first batch and made them with plain (all-purpose) flour. The second batch was made with the addition of a teaspoon of baking powder and certainly had a lighter texture.

If you don't have any self-raising flour, or baking powder, available go right ahead and make your Garibaldi with plain flour instead; they taste just as good.

Finally, how big is a raisin scoop? Well, how much do you like raisins? I packed my Garibaldi biscuits with as many raisins as I could squeeze in. I like raisins.