Three Ingredients Corn Flour Biscuits

This is a simple recipe for a dry, delicate and airy biscuits that melt in your mouth. With only 3 ingredients in the recipe, and easy preparation process in one bowl, this recipe is a winner when you want something sweet for a cup of tea very quickly. Another advantage of this recipe is that it is both gluten and dairy free. It was the first biscuit recipe I made 16 years ago, when diagnosed with coeliac disease. I have forgotten about it, and only when one of my readers wrote to me about her grandmother’s cookies with corn flour, did I remember my first creation, which was based on a simple sponge recipe I made for years. All I had to do now, was to weigh the quantities of ingredients I previously used in my old cup I used for baking. I also reduced sugar amount in presented recipe.

The texture of these biscuits depends on how well you beat eggs with sugar. Biscuits can be baked as hard, and not as light and airy, when eggs are only whisked with sugar to combine them together, without sugar being completely dissolved. I like them hard and crunchy as well, may be even more. These biscuits last very long in air-tight container and were very handy for me in my initial stages of adaptation to gluten free diet. I always had them with me when I was out and they were compulsory in my holidays kit.

These biscuits are also very handy to make gluten free tiramisu-like desserts, where biscuits are soaked in strong coffee and layered with custard, cream or yoghurt.  I used naturally set organic yoghurt without sweeteners and fresh blueberries to make a delightful breakfast treat.

Corn flour (sometimes it is called corn meal) gives its special unmistakable flavour to these biscuits. Vanilla, lemon zest or other flavourings can be added to the batter. The batter itself is very runny and has to be spooned on a lined with baking paper tray. Baking paper does not need greasing, but biscuits have to rest and cool down on the paper to be separated from it with a nice bottom.

Ingredients: 

for 36-40 biscuits – three baking trays

• 2 large eggs
• 120g sugar
• 100g corn flour (shown in the middle of the photo below, not corn starch – on the right, or fine polenta – on the left)

optional

• vanilla, lemon zest, almond extract

Preparation:

• sift corn flour
• beat eggs with sugar well, until pale and triple in size
• add corn flour
• mix it with a whisk until fully combined
• line 3 baking trays with baking paper
• spoon the batter, leaving the space between each portion of the batter – a level table spoon – 12 biscuits per square 30+ cm tray
• bake in preheated to 170C fan forced oven
• time depends on how many trays you bake simultaneously
• leave biscuits to cool down on the tray
• biscuits are easily separated (peeled) from baking paper

My attempts to bake this batter as perfectly round biscuits in a well-greased tray for mini pies failed spectacularly. Biscuits were impossible to separate from the tray, and I got them out only after soaking them in coffee and even then I had to scoop them out. These soaked biscuits were just perfect for the light layered dessert with yoghurt and blueberries.