Ingredients

Also known as cookies.

Digestive, rich tea, shortcake, lincolns, custard creams, bourbons, oreos - everyone likes some kind of biscuit (cookie).
For crushing for a biscuit base stick to a plain (ie no cream or chocolate) biscuit. Slightly sweet biscuits like digestives (they're like Graham Crackers) work best.

Similar to dark molasses, this is thick, dark, flavoursome sugar syrup (actually a byproduct of the sugar refining process).
For easy handling, warm the tin or dip the spoon into hot water before measuring.

Generally distilled from wine (although it can be made from other fruits, eg. American Applejack or French Calvados). It may or may not be aged.

If a recipe calls for brandy you can normally skip it or substitute another spirit if you don't want the alcohol or don't like the flavour. The one exception being if you're using the brandy to flambe as you need something with a similar alcohol content to be able to light it.

Butter lends a fantastic taste to cakes, however you'll actually find that using margarine can give you a lighter cake.

Only use unsalted butter if a recipe actually calls for it, otherwise you'll find that your cakes and icing don't taste quite as nice as they otherwise would - a touch of salt is needed to perk up sweet foods as well as savoury!