Pryaniki

Make it step by step

1. Warm the honey, caster sugar and butter in a saucepan over low heat, stirring, for 4-5 minutes, until melted and smooth. Do not let it boil.
2. Take the pan off the heat and whisk in the bicarbonate of soda. The mixture foams and darkens at once.
3. That reaction is what gives pryaniki their soft, slightly chewy crumb instead of a snap, and it happens because honey is acidic enough to react with the soda on its own.
4. Cool to about 60C/140F, warm rather than hot to a fingertip.
5. Whisk in the whole egg and the egg yolk.
6. Whisk the flour, all the spices and the salt together in a separate bowl.
7. Stir the dry mixture into the honey in two additions, to a soft, tacky dough.
8. Wrap and chill for 1 hour, until firm enough to roll.
9. Heat the oven to 180C/350F and line two baking trays.
10. Roll the dough out 1cm thick on a lightly floured worktop.
11. Keep it thick. A pryanik is a soft cake-like biscuit, and rolled out thin it bakes to something hard and brittle instead.
12. Cut 6cm rounds and space them 3cm apart on the trays, re-rolling the trimmings once.
13. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until risen and dry on top, springy when pressed at the centre, and coloured only underneath.
14. Overbaking is the failure here. They firm considerably as they cool, and one baked until browned all over sets rock hard.
15. Cool on the tray for 5 minutes, then move to a rack.
16. Whisk the icing sugar, boiling water and lemon juice together to a thin glaze that coats a spoon and runs off it in a stream.
17. Brush or dip the tops while the biscuits are still warm. The residual heat drives off the water and the glaze dries to a matt white shell rather than staying tacky.
18. Leave for an hour for the glaze to set hard.
19. Store in an airtight tin. They soften and improve over two or three days and keep for about two weeks.