I have been thinking for a while that I would like to do a regular food feature on this little blog of mine. I know I talk a fair bit about cake, but believe it or not, we eat a lot of delicious savoury, thanks to the culinary skills of my engineer husband. His ideas for meals are so much tastier than mine, so for the sake of posterity and to share some recipe ideas with those of you who are interested, I will aim to write a food related post here every Friday. Sweet treats will most definitely feature here, but hopefully this will mean a bit more of a balance between the sweet and savoury recipes I write about. That said, today is all about the sugar.
A few years ago, a brilliant annual tv series started in England. The Great British Bake Off is a brilliant competition of every day people who have no professional experiences as bakers but adore baking. The infamous and lovely Mary Berry hosts the show with Paul Hollywood, which makes it even better, as you get little snippets of her great baking wisdom in each episode. Needless to say, I love it.
One of my Christmas presents this year was the second recipe book that has been published off the back of the second series. A quick flick through the pages made me want to brush up on my biscuit baking skills. So, I made these pretty little things. They are simple and sweet - essentially a shortbread mixture combined with melted chocolate then layered to create a striped effect.
45g dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids)
45g white chocolate
125g unsalted butter (room temperature)
100g caster sugar
1 large egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
250g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
method
1. Melt the dark and white chocolate separately.
2. Beat the butter and sugar together until mixture is pale and fluffy.
3. Beat in the egg and vanilla extract.
4. Sift in the flour and baking powder. Work in until thoroughly combined.
5. Divide the dough in half, then mix the dark chocolate into one half, the white into the other.
6. Shape the dough into a rectangles, then sandwich between 2 sheets of cling film (plastic wrap) and roll out into a 20cm x 15cm rectangle. I recommend measuring your rectangles to ensure they're the same shape and size to get the best results.
7. Slide the wrapped dough's onto a tray and chill in the fridge for 30mins.
8.Peel off the top layer of clingfilm on the dark chocolate rectangle. Do the same on the white, then invert the white chocolate dough onto the dark chocolate dough.
9. Remove the uppermost layer of clingfilm and slice the edges of the dough to give a neat finish.
10.Cut into 3 strips (20 x 5cm) then stack the strips on top of oneanother.
11. Wrap in the cling film then chill for another 30 mins.
12. Pre-heat the oven to 180C / Gas 4 / 350F
13. Grease 2 large baking sheets.
14. Remove the dough from the fridge and slice into 5mm slices. Lay each slice flat on the baking sheets with room in between to allow the biscuits to spread a little while baking.
15. Bake for 8 - 10 mins or until lightly golden around the edges.
16. Leave biscuits on the trays to cool for a few minutes before transferring onto a cooling rack.
Comments
Post a Comment