Sometimes it can take a lot of thinking for me to come up with a recipe for these posts, but this time was different. I decided I wanted to do something crocodile related this week and the idea of these crocodile teeth biscuits popped into my head immediately!
Shortbread is super easy to make with only 3 ingredients and can easily be made vegan, just substitute normal butter for a vegan dairy free spread! The icing was also super simple to make, just some icing sugar and water!
So of course the animal this week is a crocodile! More specifically the Sunda Gharial, one of the world’s largest crocodile species!
So, let’s get to the recipe!
Recipe:
Ingredients:
- 3 oz plain flour
- 2 oz butter
- 1 oz sugar
- Pinch of salt
- Icing sugar
- Water
Equipment:
- Large baking tray
- Baking paper
- Mixing bowl
- Sieve
Method:
- Preheat your oven to 190°C and line the baking tray with the baking paper.
- Sieve in the flour into a mixing along with a pinch of salt.
- Rub in the butter with your fingers.
- Add the sugar and knead until you have a dough (you might need to add a tiny amount of milk just to help it combine easier).
- Roll out the dough on a floured surface and using a sharp knife cut out little triangle shapes aka crocodile teeth!
- Place the biscuits onto the baking tray and bake for 15-20 minutes.
- When they are done, allow them to cool on a wire rack.
- Once the shortbread is completely cool, make up the icing by mixing a few teaspoons of icing sugar with a little water. Keep adding icing sugar and/or water until you get the right consistency. Then just pour the icing over the biscuits, making sure to spread the icing to cover the whole top of the biscuit.
Enjoy!
And now onto this week’s animal, the Sunda Gharial!
Sunda Gharial – Tomistoma schlegelii
The sunda gharial is a species of crocodile found in lowland swamp forests of Indonesia and Malaysia. They also used to exist in Singapore and Thailand but these populations are now extinct. Not a true gharial, they’re other common name is the ‘false gharial’ along with ‘Malayan gharial’ and ‘tomistoma’. Not a lot is known about this mysterious species and just how many live in the wild is unknown, but it is thought to be less than 2500.
Sunda gharials are one of the largest species of crocodile at up to 5 metres long and weighing over 200kg! The males and females don’t differ too much in appearance other than that the males are much larger and heavier. Possibly one of their most recognisable features is their long, narrow snout which contains 80 needle-like teeth. These teeth are perfectly formed for catching fish, frogs, monkeys and deer. Because their snout is so thin it is unlikely that it would be strong enough to capture large prey that other crocodile species would feed on. They are dark brown/grey in colour with black patches across their body and black bands along their tail. Their legs are small in comparison to the size of their body and thought to be fairly weak.
Female sunda gharials can lay over 20 eggs at a time and will bury them in a nest hill. She then leaves the eggs and after an incubation period of 72-90 days the young hatch out of the eggs. Whether these young turn out to be male of female is determined completely by the temperature, warmer for females and colder for males. The female has no involvement with her young and they are left to fend for themselves against predators such as tigers, leopards and wild dogs. If the young survive to adulthood, they can live for up to 80 years.
Sunda gharials are currently listed as ‘Vulnerable’ however because so little is known about this species they are sometimes classed as ‘Endangered’. There is thought to be less than 2500 left in the wild and no one is sure as to whether this population is increasing or decreasing. They tend to be found in areas populated with humans, which is proving to be a huge problem. A main threat to the sunda gharial is habitat loss due to the building of new villages, farms and palm oil plantations. Another threat is hunting, for their meat and skins, and people have also been known to eat sunda gharial eggs. However in some areas, people see the sunda gharial as a good omen, a sign that there is plenty of fish around for them to hunt.
Endangered Bakes 