I couldn’t decide whether to make lemon fork biscuits or chocolate fork biscuits – so I made both.
When my children were tiny we used to bake fork biscuits more or less every week. They only contain 4 ingredients, are ready to eat in a flash and they are very forgiving!
Chubby little fingers can squish the biscuit dough vigorously without ill effect.
The mixture contains no raw egg to worry about so, if it gets popped into a little mouth before it’s baked, it’s not the end of the world!
How To Make Fork Biscuits
Feel free to scroll down for a full recipe card at the bottom of this post but here are a few extra tips and tricks to help you!
Ingredients
- Butter – Fork biscuits are egg free and totally vegan if you use plant based butter. I would avoid using a cheap and cheerful margarine and go for one of the more recent vegan offerings which have a buttery taste. Vitalite is good and Naturli’s vegan butter block is fab, if pricey, I’d save it for toast or crumpets!
- Flour – I use self raising flour but if you can’t get hold of it use plain/all purpose flour adding 2 teaspoons of baking powder for each 150g/1 cup of flour.
- Sugar – Icing sugar or caster sugar work well in this recipe. I usually use icing/confectioner’s sugar because it whips up with the butter with less fuss than caster sugar.
Method
This is where you realise that this is possibly the simplest recipe ever! All you need to do is whisk together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy then stir in the flour and any flavourings. Draw it all together with your hands and press it into a ball.
- Don’t be worried if the mixture seems really dry when you start drawing it together. That butter soon comes into its own and you will have a lovely dough ball in no time.
- Pinch off walnut sized pieces of dough. Roll them into balls and pop them, well spaced, onto a baking sheet.
When I made these two batches I got 13 balls from the lemon mixture and 15 from the chocolate, mainly because I was winging it with the lemon ones but I weighed the chocolate ones out – 20g each gives 15 dough balls!
I never normally do this but I had a moment pretending I was in Bake Off and Paul was about to judge the size of my balls!
Dip a fork into water and use it to press the biscuit balls flat into biscuit shapes and you’re ready to bake!
Fork Biscuit Flavours
My lemon fork biscuits are flavoured with grated lemon zest while the chocolate ones have a generous spoonful of cocoa powder. You could also try making:
- Almond Fork Biscuits – add a teaspoon of almond essence to the mixture and top the biscuits with some flaked almonds
- Orange Fork biscuits – simply swap the lemon zest for orange zest!
- Chocolate Chip – if you don’t like cocoa in a biscuit add a handful of chocolate chips to the mixture instead.
- Super Lemon – my biscuits are subtly flavoured with the zest of one lemon, add more to taste. To make it even more zingy you could top them with a sprinkle of lemon sugar!
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Fork Biscuits
Ingredients
For Lemon Fork Biscuits
- 100 g vegan butter
- 50 g icing or caster sugar
- 150 g self raising flour
- 1 lemon zest only
For Chocolate Fork Biscuits
- 100 g vegan butter
- 50 g icing or caster sugar
- 125 g self raising flour
- 20 g cocoa powder
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180C/350F
To Make 15 Lemon Fork Biscuits
- Cream the butter and sugar together in a food mixer or with a wooden spoon until light and fluffy
- Add the flour and lemon zest and stir together
- Draw the mixture together with your hands until you have a dough ball
- Take walnut sized pieces of dough and roll into balls - you should get about 15.
- Lightly grease two baking trays and place the dough balls on the trays, leaving space between them so they can spread during cooking.
- Dip a fork into water and press onto each dough ball to spread them into biscuit shapes.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 10 - 15 minutes or until just beginning to brown.
- Cool on a wire rack.
To Make 15 Chocolate Fork Biscuits
- Cream the butter and sugar together in a food mixer or with a wooden spoon until light and fluffy
- Add the flour and cocoa powder and stir together
- Draw the mixture together with your hands until you have a dough ball
- Take walnut sized pieces of dough and roll into balls - you should get about 15.
- Lightly grease two baking trays and place the dough balls on the trays, leaving space between them so they can spread during cooking.
- Dip a fork into water and press onto each dough ball to spread them into biscuit shapes.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 10 - 15 minutes or until just beginning to brown.
- Cool on a wire rack.