German Biscuits, also known as Empire Biscuits, Belgian Biscuits and, originally (according to Wikipedia) Linzer Biscuits or Deutsch Biscuits.

In the brief history of the German Biscuit that I gleaned from my research, it turns out that around the time of WWI, many people started to call these Empire Biscuits. But in Northern Ireland, they continued to be called German Biscuits.

Whatever you choose to call it, this is a simple shortbread biscuit, sandwiched with jam, covered with water icing and topped with a glacé cherry.

These are relatively easy to make. Although I will warn you that the dough is pretty crumbly and takes quite a bit of reshaping and re-rolling. But stick with it. The resulting shortbread is light, tasty and (unsurprisingly) crumbly. I have made these with both a chilled dough and one where I went straight to rolling it out. And it worked in both situations. If you feel the dough is too soft to work with, then certainly put it in the fridge for 30 minutes or so to firm up.  

I used a 2½in/58mm fluted cutter and got 24 single biscuits from the dough. I’d also recommend using a palette knife or bench scraper to help lift the biscuits off your work surface and transfer onto the baking sheet.

I needed 4 tsp water to make my icing. You may need more or less, just add a little at a time. What you want to achieve is icing that is thin enough to spread easily but thick enough not to drip off the edges of the biscuits.

Traditionally, German Biscuits are topped with a piece of glacé cherry. But I topped some of mine with sprinkles, because, well, everything’s better with sprinkles. And I knew that Little Miss Traybakes would like them.  She’s a big fan of rainbow sprinkles.