Note: This Coffee Angel Eye Biscuits recipe originally part of my Biscuit Advent Calendar, a one-recipe-a-day email series in December. I’m gradually turning those recipes into proper blog posts so they’re easier to find. You can find the other recipes and sign up for the next round if you want here.
I’ve baked this recipe for 20 years now. It comes from a magazine my grandma used to buy for me when I was a student “so I would have an idea what to cook.” (I do have big stacks of them.) But this particular edition began my own annual baking tradition.
In 2013, when I lived with my parents-in-law (an experience my husband found more challenging than I did :D), his mum (thanks again for housing us!) declared these biscuits her favourites. Since 2020, my kids help me make them every year. So at this point the recipe spans four generations in my family. (Isn’t that lovely you can think awwww now.)
Now before we get to it: I have put my advice and tips after the recipe, so scroll down and read that section for my personal experiences.
I’ve lived in both England and the US, so my English is a happy hybrid. You’ll see British spellings, American spellings, metric, and cups. And because “cookie” makes me think of giant American chocolate-chip cookies, I’m sticking with biscuits here (sans gravy).
Coffee Hussar Biscuits
Crumbly angel eye biscuits with coffee flavour
Makes 50
Ingredients
175g plain flour (not self-raising) (1 and 1/3 cup)
50g ground almonds (1/2 cup)
50g sugar (1/4 cup)
125g butter
(about a stick)
1 egg yolk (keep the white in a box in the fridge)
3 teaspoons Coffee granules/powder
a pinch of salt
100g or so jam (1/3 cup) (black currant goes very well, anything red looks nice)
2 tablespoons icing sugar (to dust)
Instructions
Make the dough
Mix flour, almonds, coffee, sugar, butter, egg yolk, and salt until the dough just comes together then stop kneading. We’re not making bread, so no gluten development and no warm buttery mess. Wrap and chill for at least an hour (or overnight).
Tip: flatten the dough to speed up cooling.
Shape and Bake
Preheat your oven to 180°C/355°F conventional (no fan assist). If your oven has no setting without fan then drop the temperature to 160°C/320°F.
Roll small balls of dough (if you want to be really precise you can weigh the dough and divide by 50. Should be about 8g).
Press a little well into each ball using a cooking spoon handle or chopstick.
Tip: If it cracks a lot:
– warm it slightly in your hand
– or support it with your other hand while pressing (small cracks are fine, you just need a well for the jam so it doesn’t run out when filling)
Baking
Chill again on the tray before baking. This prevents spreading of the biscuits. Bake at 180°C/355°F for about 10 minutes until the cookies start to very lightly brown. Let them cool completely.
Fill
Heat the jam slightly (microwave or stovetop) so it becomes runny. Fill each biscuit with a teaspoon or use a piping bag if you want to feel like a professional (I don’t). Dust with icing sugar. The sugar will melt into the jam and stay pretty. Let them sit uncovered overnight to dry, then pack them into tins the next day. They keep in a cool, dry place for several weeks.Four weeks is the longest I’ve tested so far. (They rarely survive that long.)
Enjoy!
General Notes (not just for this recipe)
Scheduling
Most biscuits are a multi-day project for me and I can recommend this strategy if you don’t have big blocks of uninterrupted time.
Day 1: Make dough + chill
Day 2: Shape, bake, cool
Day 3: Decorate
You can prep several doughs at once, they keep well in the fridge for about a week. Some (like gingerbread) rest for months. This approach keeps the work manageable and fun. You can make everything in one day, too you just need to factor in breaks for dough resting and cooling.
Eggs
This recipe uses only egg yolks. For shortbread-type biscuits, you can use either whole eggs or just the yolks. I generally try to balance my recipes so that the leftover yolks from one recipe can be used in another that calls for egg whites. Recipes that use lots of egg whites include macaroons, for example Cinnamon stars.
Oven Settings
When you bake anything shortbread-like, an oven that is properly hot prevents the biscuits from spreading too much, so it’s a good idea not to preheat at the last minute. Also, I prefer conventional heat over fan assist for this kind of baking, it makes the tray bake more evenly. But it is very much a matter of preference.