Biscoitos de maizena

biscoitos de maizena

Yes, I am blogging in Portuguese! Well…at least the name of the recipe. It sounds much more enticing. Let me tell you why I ended up making these lovely little biscuits. The inspiration to bake them actually came from Candi’s post (biscottini al limone). Last weekend I tried making them but sadly they turned into a misdemeanour (read:they ended up in the bin). Why? Because I must have put too much bicarbonate of soda in them and you could taste it when you ate them. Oh dear!  Candi’s teaspoon must be much smaller than mine. :-(  Never mind: I know what to do next time. Anyway, I noticed that one of Candi’s biscottini al limone’s ingredients was maizena. Only a tablespoon of it but still. It so happened that I had a small bag of it in my cupboard, still unopened and about to expire with NO idea what to make with it so I started searching the net for biscuits recipes requiring maizena flour. Apparently they are popular in Brasil, judging by the quantity of recipes available. In some recipes maizena is mixed with normal flour (which is what I did). In others they just use maizena, which would be ideal for any gluten intolerant people. By the way: I am planning to make those too in the near future. Just for the heck of it! But for now let me tell you about these biscoitos. They are nice and simple to make and  would make a nice present for a friend, if nicely packaged, as you can see from the picture below. They are ideal to offer with tea or coffee and keep well too in an airtight container. I don’t often make biscuits (ok, never) but I think I’ll start experiment with them now. So thank you Candi for the inspiration. And by the way: I will try the lemon biscuits again but with much less bicarbonate. He he :-)

INGREDIENTS

110 gr. flour

110 gr. maizena

100 gr. sugar

1 level teaspoon baking powder

vanilla essence, a few drops

2 egg yolks

100 gr. butter, softened

1 pinch of salt

METHOD

Beat the butter with the sugar. Add the vanilla essence and the egg yolks. Add the flour, the salt, the baking powder and the maizena. If too stiff add some water. Knead until you have a soft ball. Flatten it with a rolling pin and cut the biscuits using a cookie cutter. Place on a tray and cook for approx. 15 minutes at 180 degrees (until golden).

 

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8 Responses to “Biscoitos de maizena”


  • Aspetto con trepidazione il sacchettino. 😉

  • Oh, in effetti sì, ho usato i cucchiaini che ho nel cassetto e sono quelli da caffè. Accidenti, dovrei essere come Delia che misura al milligrammo. Aggiungerò scarso alla ricetta. Ottimi questi con la maizena di cui dovremmo studiare le potenzialità perché aggiunge davvero leggerezza ai dolci. E che dici? ci mettiamo anche a studiare il portoghese???

    • Beh adesso non esageriamo! E dove lo troviamo il tempo??? :-) Magari quando si va in pensione,eh??? A proposito ho scoperto che questi biscottini di maizena li chiamano alfajores in sud America. Mi sa che al weekend provo quelli solo di maizena. Vediamo come vengono.

  • Lucina

    Hi! I like the look of your biscuits but have never heard of maizena flour. Have you got any other information on it?

    • Hey Anne, maizena is corn flour. They also call it cornstarch flour. It’s gluten free. Apparently is very popular in South America.. I guess tortilla chips are made from it. You have to go to a specialist/ health food shop to get it here in England. You won’t find it in supermarkets. Take care!

  • Actually, maizena is only one kind of starch. You can use with the same results, I guess, other starches, like potato starch (in Italian, fecola, much more common in Italy) or rice starch.

  • Сomunque i biscottini di Lucina sono proprio speciali! Sablés quel tanto che basta…

Leave a Reply to Lucina