Using just 4 ingredients, thumbprint biscuits were the first time I cooked for myself – in a school cookery class when I was aged about 8!  It’s the only school cookery lesson I have any memory of.  I can remember baking the thumbprint biscuits and taking them home in an old biscuit tin!

Many people call the recipe the 123 Biscuits Recipe as that reflects the proportions of ingredients used, for easy remembering.  Others call it the 4 Ingredients Biscuits Recipe, as the four ingredients are just flour, butter, sugar and jam!

Today I baked just five biscuits – it would’ve been six if I’d measured them out, but I just pulled out and rolled the dough by hand without a thought for how many I’d end up with.  I was going to eat them all myself, so how many it made was of no concern.

I whip up these speedy biscuits using just a regular fork and mixed in a measuring jug as I’ve not got a bowl the right size, nor a mixer.  It takes about 4-5 minutes prep time.

Thumbprint Biscuit Ingredients:

• 30 grams sugar (I just used granulated sugar as that’s what I had)
• 60 grams butter or margarine (I used cheap supermarket own brand margarine)
• 90 grams plain flour, sifted (UK plain flour = US all purpose flour)
• A couple of teaspoons of jam (I used cheap supermarket own brand jam)

Method:

1. Cream together the butter and sugar.
2. Fold in the flour – with this small volume of flour (just 4-5 tablespoons) I sieved the flour into the mixture using a simple tea strainer.
3. When the flour is fully combined, gently roll pieces of the dough into balls, place the balls on a baking sheet and flatten then slightly.
   
4. Make a dent in the top, using your thumb.  Fill the indentation with a little jam – not too much else it will overflow when the jam gets hot.
   
5. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 150-155°C for 22-25 minutes, until the thumbprint biscuits are a golden brown.  You can bake them darker than I do if you wish… I was just in a rush to get to the part where I ate them!
   
6. Cool the biscuits and eat!

You can be careful and make the biscuits identical, but I use this recipe as a super quick and easy biscuit recipe, so mine do tend to be of differing shapes and sizes as it’s just a fast recipe and not a competition entry!

Mini Oven Baking

I baked these biscuits in my mini oven, my little Lidl toaster oven.  It’s ideal for such a small quantity and uses very little electricity.  They will cook just as well in a full-sized oven, but if this is all you’re making that can seem a waste of energy.

The mini oven settings I used were:

1. Put the mini oven shelf on the lowest level,
2. Turn both the top and bottom elements on at 155°C.
3. Pre-heat the mini oven for just 2-3 minutes,
4. Bake the biscuits for 22 minutes.

Cook for Free / Snack for Later!

If you are using an oven, with two shelves, you could even make this a “go to” recipe to make up a snack for later when you’ve got the oven on for anything else already. These biscuits are an easy way to “fill the oven” and make your energy go further!

With a main dish cooking in the oven, why not just slide a tray of these biscuits in on the shelf below, then pop it up to the top shelf when you remove your main dinner so they can finish off – and they can be your snack later on that evening, or for tomorrow’s lunchbox!  As they bake at a temperature lower than many other dishes you’re probably cooking, there’s most likely no need to leave the oven on – just pop these onto the top shelf and turn the oven off to let them finish off… that makes them free to cook!