Cornish Fairings – Spiced Biscuits
Cornish Fairings are traditional crunchy, spiced biscuits/cookies, flavoured with ginger, mixed spice and cinnamon. Popular in Cornwall for over 100 years, the name ‘Fairings’ refers to gifts bought from a fair, normally for a loved one. They were traditionally made in early June to be sold at fairs to celebrate the holy days of Whitsuntide and Corpus Christi. However, these days, they can be bought all year round, in most grocery shops and bakeries.
Classically, these are meant to to be crunchy biscuits, although I confess, I like to bake mine so that the centre is still slightly chewy. If you prefer a crispier biscuit, simply cook them for a minute or two longer. They are wonderful with a cup of tea or coffee, and are excellent if you like to dunk your biscuits in a hot drink.
Apparently, the history of modern dunking goes back to the 16th century. Sailors in the British Royal Navy used to dunk their ‘hard tack’ biscuits in beer, to soften them and make then edible. These days, many people like to dunk crunchy biscuits in hot tea or coffee. Apparently Chocolate Digestive Biscuits and Gingernuts are the most popular dunking biscuits! Dunking not only softens the texture of hard biscuits, but the warmth from a hot drink, will dissolve some of the sugar in the biscuits and release more flavour.
I am emphatically NOT a dunker! I do not like the texture after the biscuit has been dunked and I do not like crumbs in my tea! However, if you are a dunker, I’d recommend cooking these so that they are crunchy and dunk them for 3-4 seconds – apparently they are perfect for this! Here endeth the dunking lesson!
How to make Cornish Fairings – Spiced Biscuits
Collect all your ingredients together:
- unsalted butter
- golden syrup
- fine salt
- caster sugar
- plain/all-purpose
- baking powder
- ground ginger powder
- mixed spice powder
- cinnamon powder
How to make these delicious fairings:
- Heat the butter, salt and syrup over a moderate heat until melted.
- Add the sugar, flour, baking powder, powdered ginger, mixed spice and cinnamon and thoroughly mix.
- Use a small ice cream scoop or a tablespoon to measure out roughly 15 – 16 balls of dough.
- Once you have divided the dough into balls, roll gently into a neater shape if necessary
- To cook the biscuits, place them spread out on a baking sheet – I get 4 – 6 per sheet depending on the size of the baking sheet and bake in the centre of the oven for 10 – 14 minutes. (I cook mine for 11 minutes.)
- The cookies are cooked when: they have spread out, are starting to brown on the edges and look ever so slightly underdone. They should still be soft in the middle. They will be slightly raised but will settle and flatten as they cool.
- Let them cool on the baking sheet for 10 minutes and then transfer to a cooling rack.
Ingredients 
1 Heat butter, salt and syrup until melted. 
2 Add sugar, flour, baking powder, ginger, mixed spice and cinnamon 
… and thoroughly mix. 
3 & 4 Measure out roughly 15 balls of dough. 
5 & 6 Bake 
7 Cool
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Cornish Fairings – Spiced Biscuits
Cornish Fairings are traditional crunchy, spiced biscuits/cookies, flavoured with ginger, mixed spice and cinnamon.
Ingredients
- 100g unsalted butter
- 100g golden syrup
- ¼ teaspoon fine salt
- 100g caster sugar
- 200g plain/all-purpose flour
- 1½ teaspoons baking powder
- 1½ – 2½ teaspoons ground ginger (I use 2½, we like quite a strong ginger flavour.)
- 1 teaspoon mixed spice powder
- ½ teaspoon cinnamon powder
Instructions
-
Collect together your equipment (see Recipe Notes below) and ingredients.
-
Preheat oven to Fan Oven 160°C/180°C/350°F/Gas 4 and, either grease your baking trays or, line them with baking parchment.
-
Heat the butter, salt and syrup over a moderate heat until melted.
-
Add the sugar, flour, baking powder, powdered ginger, mixed spice and cinnamon and thoroughly mix.
-
Use a small ice cream scoop or a tablespoon to measure out roughly 15 – 16 balls of dough.
-
Once you have divided the dough into balls, roll gently into a neater shape if necessary
-
To cook the biscuits, place them spread out on a greased baking sheet – I get 4 – 6 per sheet depending on the size of the baking sheet.
-
Baking one tray at a time: bake for 10 – 14 minutes. (I cook mine for 11 minutes.)
-
Baking two trays at a time: add one minute to the total time to cook. Bake for half this time and then quickly swap the trays over i.e. put the top tray on the lower shelf and the tray from the lower shelf and on the higher shelf and cook for the remaining time.(So, for one tray I cook for 11 minutes and 2 trays for 6 minutes, swap the trays and then another 6 minutes = 12 minutes on total.)
-
The cookies are cooked when: they have spread out, are starting to brown on the edges and look ever so slightly underdone. They should still be soft in the middle. They will be slightly raised but will settle and flatten as they cool.
-
Let them cool on the baking sheet for 10 minutes and then transfer to a cooling rack.
Recipe Notes
Equipment:
- Kitchen scales and measuring spoons
- Large saucepan
- Baking sheets, either greased or lined with baking parchment
- Cooling rack
