Sweets with lemon curd, orange peel or a lemony sauce.. Mmm, I love all things citrus!

Where I live in the centre of Japan, you see lots of satsumas, yuzus, kumquats, sweet pomelos and other citrus trees growing in people’s gardens.

This yuzu tree is near my house. It’s a bit late in the season now, and you can see the birds have been enjoying the left-overs.

It can be difficult to get citrus fruit that are unwaxed in the shops here, so the citrus trees in my garden are a treasure. Marmalade made with yuzu and kumquats is delicious!

While I’m on the subject, “satsumas” are called something different here. Satsuma is the name of a place in Japan, but say “satsuma” to most Japanese and they will think of sweet potatoes, not oranges… I wondered where the English name came from, so I looked it up.

It turns out that the Satsuma region (now Kagoshima) in Kyushu is where the original satsuma plants came from. So that is why the fruit came to be called “satsuma” in English. Hey, you learn something every day!

Winter is slowly turning into spring. I made some yuzu finger biscuits that melt in your mouth like snowflakes.

If you’re feeling like spoiling yourself a bit, they would go great with a glass of white wine, or champagne!

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Ingredients

• 3 eggs
• 100g granulated sugar
• 90g flour
• 300g finely chopped yuzu peel
• 80g sugar

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1. Break the eggs into a bowl, add the sugar and beat with a whisk.

2. Warm the bowl in a pan of hot water slightly bigger than the bowl and whip until the mix turns whitish.

3. Take the bowl off the heat and continue to whisk until you can draw a circle with the mixture when you lift the whisk.

4. Add the yuzu peel and sieved flour, and mix well but gently with a spatula.

5. Spoon the mixture onto a baking sheet in individual round dollops, and sprinkle generously with powdered sugar, leave for 2 minutes or so then sprinkle with sugar again.

6. Bake in an oven preheated to 170ºC for 15 minutes until they are lighly crisped, then take out of the oven and cool.

7. Your finger biscuits will keep for about 10 days in an airtight case.

You could make them long and thin (like fingers!) instead of round, and they’d be great made into a citrus mousse or vanilla charlotte cake, too!