Wednesday 21 February 2007

Chocolate Shortbreads

Q: What do you get when you combine a very rich, thick, butter cookie with chocolate?
A: A little bit of heaven in your mouth!

This particular recipe did not come from an internet search engine, nor from an online forum. This recipe came from a children's book that Ethan borrowed from his school library. The book is called "Fort Biscuits" by Leslie Howarth.

Ethan insisted that we try out the very simple cookie recipe at the end of the story, and because it was so simple, and because we literally had all the ingredients at hand, we did. Since then, I've made quite a few batches of this delicious biscuit/cookie. Essentially the biscuit is a Chocolate Shortbread. It crumbles in your mouth into a chocolatey goodness! And YES, flavanols in chocolates have been found to be good for both the brain. Yummy brain-food, anyone?

Although the recipe actually calls for the biscuit to be rolled into balls and pressed into shape with a fort fork, I've found that using a cookie cutter makes the biscuit very pretty. Since I was baking this for Chinese New Year on Valentine's Day, I decided to use the heart-shaped cookie cutter to get this:
Pretty hearts all in ready for the ovenA mouthful of heaven in every bite!

Fort Biscuits (Chocolate Shortbread)

Ingredients
180g butter or margarine
60g icing sugar
120g plain flour
60g cornflour
30g cocoa powder
½ tsp vanilla essence

Method
1. Preheat oven to 190°C
2. Cream butter and sugar.
3. Add flour, cornflour and cocoa powder.
4. Add vanilla essence.
5. Knead into a soft dough.
6. Roll dough into walnut sized balls.
7. Place on baking tray and press down lightly with wet fork.
8. Bake for 12-15 minutes.
9. Dust with icing sugar when cooled.
10. Store in an air-tight container when biscuits are cooled thoroughly.


The chocolate shortbreads go very well with a tall glass of ice-cold milk or milo.

Excuse me while I brush chocolate crumbs off my laptop. Smile


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey hey! I tried your fort biscuit recipe! But I had to add alot more plain flour (about 2 tablespoonfuls) as the mixture was too soft to even knead and kept sticking to my hands. I didn't put it into the oven for very long as the biscuits were cooked in real quick time! The result: very crumbly biscuit like you've described. But it wasn't sweet enough for me, so I sprinkled icing sugar on top before storing in container. Overall verdict: Easy to make and can be done in a very short time!

Brenda said...

Actuallt, if the dough is soft, you could put it into the fridge to harden a bit before working on it. *smiles*

Anonymous said...

Ok, thanks for the tip! Will try it again when this batch is finished. I'm going to try the cheesecake recipe tonight!

catherine said...

The cookie turned out to be crumbly... even fragile to handle.. is it meant to be like tat? ...