If greed alone were the spur and measure, these would be my favourite biscuits - Nigella Lawson
Well, it has to be said, I think Nigella has a little case of hyperbole when it comes to these biscuits. I mean they are perfectly good biscuits, but they wouldn't be my first choice if greed alone were indeed the spur and measure. They wouldn't be my first choice even if it wasn't! But yes, acceptable afternoon tea (or in our case, coffee) fare.
The verdictUnusual or substituted ingredients: Despite Nigella loving the charm of the "trailer-trash Trex" (vegetable shortening, or Copha as we call it in Australia) because it makes these biscuits light, I can't say I share her admiration in this case. I used the recommended amount of copha, but I think if I was making these again, I'd probably just use butter instead (even though Nigella warns against it). For me, the biscuits were too light, too crumbly, and I blame the copha!!
Special utensils or cookware: None - you can beat by hand or use mixer (which is what I did - cooking for the lazy person here!!). I do recommend ensuring the copha isn't too hard when you use it as it is quite hard to mix it in - if you look closely at the photo below you can see some unmixed bits of copha.
Repeatability: As mentioned already, not the best biscuits I've ever had. But they are still good, nice and easy to make, you can whip up a batch fairly quickly. Husby seems to like them, as the number of biscuits left in the container is steadily getting smaller each day!
Sauciness: Nope, none at all. Even Nigella's talking up of serving them with ice-cream or as an ice-cream sandwich doesn't make these saucy for me.
Overall pleasure level: Hmmm. I think these can be no more than a 5. 
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