Recipe - Almond Bisket Bread

Recently I've rediscovered my energy for cooking.  This is a good thing as I've been asked to make some of my well-known dishes for old friends.  Unfortunately as I haven't been cooking much in the last couple of years (and memory issues associated with the migraine) I just can't remember how to make many of these dishes I could just dash off the top of my head.  So, I'm going to be writing them down here as I use them, so I have a reference point for future :)

Recipe - French Bisket Bread aka Mel's Proto Macaroons

I made Rosewater and lemon variants of this recipe for the Midland Library Christmas Morning Tea and have been asked for the recipe.  Here it is.

A recipe from Elinor Fettiplace's Receipt Book

To Make French Bisket Bread (17th century)
Take one pound of almonds blanched in cold water, beat them verie smale, put in some rose water to them, in the beating, wherein some musk hath lien, then take one pound of sugar beaten and searced and beat with your almonds, then take the whites of fowre eggs beaten and put to the sugar & almonds, then beat it well together, then heat the oven as hot as you doe for other bisket bread, then take a paper, & strawe some sugar upon it, & lay two spoonfulls of the stuf in a place, then lay the paper5 upon a board full of holes, & put them in the oven as fast as you can, & so bake them, when they begin to looke somewhat browne they are baked inough.

Mel's modern version:
     100gm almond meal
     100gm sugar
     1 beaten egg white
     touch of rosewater

Lightly beat egg white, then add in almond meal and sugar.  Add in a touch of rosewater to taste and to ensure a good consistency. With damp hands, break over pieces of mix around a 50cent piece, roll into a ball and place on baking paper on biscuit tray. This size batch will make a dozen biscuits.

Put in the oven at 180C until the top cracks and turns golden brown.  In my previous oven this took 20 mins, in my current oven this takes 30 mins with the tray needing to be turned around at the 15min mark.

Variations:

• You can change out the rosewater and include lemon juice for example.  You can add cocoa for chocolate biscuits - the basic recipe can be easily adapted.
• The consistency and chewiness can also be altered by changing the type of sugar used - caster - granulated - icing.  I have had great success using demerara sugar.
• Grinding your own almonds for the recipe also changes the texture.

Play with the recipe and make it your own.  And please do tell me if you come up with any great variants!