Baking for Beginners: Chilli Bacon Biscuits

Last weekend, I made Dan Lepard's chilli almond biscuits. "You know what would make these ever better?", said my fella as he hoovered up the still-warm crumbs of the last one. "Bacon."

This weekend, I made chilli bacon biscuits.

These are incredibly easy to make. The method is essentially "mix all the things in a bowl, shape them into biscuits, bake." We've made bacon biscuits before but they've been flavoured with maple and peanut butter and I don't hold with mixing sweet and savoury. I don't hold with bacon either, what with being vegetarian, but I'm a Vegetarian Who's Ok With Being Around Meat (a V-WOW!BAM! for short). These taste flipping awesome, so I'm told.

Chilli bacon biscuits (makes about 30)

You will need:

• 150g unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 150g grated cheese
• 1 tsp ground chilli
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 1 tsp paprika
• 150g plain flour
• 1 tbsp water
• 2 rashers of bacon, fried or grilled

Make it!

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4.
2. Chop the butter into small pieces and mix it in a bowl with the cheese, chilli, salt, pepper and paprika. Use a fork, it'll all get clogged up in a whisk. There's no point getting your food processor out, this all mixes together easily.
3. Tip in the flour (no need to sift) and the water, and mix into a soft dough. Chop the cooked bacon into tiny pieces and mix it in too.
4. Spoon the mixture onto a sheet of baking paper and roll it into a cylinder about 4cm thick. Pop it in the freezer for 10 minutes to firm up. 
5. When you're ready to bake it, unroll it and cut into slices about 1cm thick. Arrange them on a tray lined with baking paper (reuse the paper you wrapped them up in) and bake for 20-25 minutes until firm around the edges and golden-brown.