Make the shortbread first as it needs to chill. Cream together the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add the lemon extract, then the flour and mix. Add the food colouring just as your dough is beginning to form and work into it, making sure the dough is mostly grey.

Prepare a baking tray by lining it with greaseproof paper or baking parchment.

Tip the dough out onto a clean and floured surface and roll out until around ½ inch in thickness.

Cut out your rock hammer shapes using a small sharp knife and template if preferred. Place each biscuit on the baking tray.

Keep gathering the dough, rolling it out and cutting out the shapes until you have used up the dough.

Place the baking tray in the fridge for at least 1 hour.

Whilst your biscuits are chilling, make your brandy snap mix.

Set aside a cooling rack. Grease a rolling pin with oil (I used olive) and lay on the rack for now.

Weigh out the butter, then the sugar, then the golden syrup on top in a metal saucepan. You should end up with 165g worth of ingredients in the one pot.

Place the pot over a low to medium heat and warm through until the sugar has dissolved. Stir regularly. You’ll know the sugar has fully dissolved when you scrape a spoon across the bottom of the pan and no longer hear a gritty sound. Do not let the mixture boil as it could crystallise.

Once the sugar has dissolved, take the mixture off the heat and leave to cool for 2 minutes.

Sieve the flour and ginger over the mixture and add the lemon. Stir in, mixing really well.

Pour 4 heaped tablespoons in individual splodges on one baking tray, with 4 or so inches gap between them as they will spread. Repeat on the next baking tray so that you have 8 brandy snap splodges in total, across the 2 baking trays.

Bake just 1 tray for around 8 – 12 minutes. This fully depends on how hot your oven runs: mine only took 8 minutes. They will be ready when they are well spread and a very deep golden colour.

Once baked, remove from the oven and leave for one moment to harden slightly.

Use a fish slice to check the texture of the brandy snaps are solid but pliable enough to shape. Slide it under the edges and make sure the brandy snaps are together but still soft enough to mould. If any of the brandy snaps have melted together at the edges, use the fish slice to gently slice them apart.

Using your fish slice, gently lift one brandy snap from the tray and mould it gently around the oiled rolling pin. Press the seal underneath the rolling pin and hold for a few seconds. Slide off the rolling pin and lay on the wire rack, seal down, to cool.

Repeat for the other brandy snap mixes.

Repeat steps 15 to 18 with the second tray of brandy snap splodges.

Leave the biscuits to cool on the tray.

Make your whipped cream filling.

Whip the cream with an electric whisk until you have stiff peaks. Add sugar and brandy (if using) and whisk in briefly.

Once the brandy snaps are cool, pipe the whipped cream into the middle of each one using a piping bag – or sandwich bag with a corner snipped off – and a nozzle of your choice. Do this by piping halfway into the brandy snap on one end, starting from the middle and working out. Then turn the brandy snap around and repeat for the other end so that each brandy snap is full.

Present your brandy snaps with the accompanying rock hammer biscuits. Enjoy digging the whipped cream out with your biscuits!