BISCUITS CHOCOLATE RECIPES

Steps:

• Beat the butter and sugar together with an optional pinch of sea salt in a bowl until light and fluffy, then beat in the eggs one at a time. Sift over the flour and cocoa powder and beat into the butter mix, then fold through the chocolate chips. The mix can be made up to 2 days ahead and chilled or frozen for a month, or used straight away.
• To bake, heat oven to 190C/170C fan/gas 5. If the mix is at room temperature, place evenly spaced spoonfuls on parchment-lined baking sheets, allowing 2 tbsp for each cookie. If the mix is fridge cold, you can roll it into 40g balls before baking. The balls can be frozen and the biscuits baked from frozen, but they’ll need a few minutes more. Bake for 12-15 mins until spread out and crusty around the outside. Leave to cool slightly and enjoy warm, or leave to cool completely and eat cold. The biscuits will keep in a tin for three days.
• As an optional extra, the biscuits can be dipped in chocolate. To do this, melt your chosen type of chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water or in the microwave. Leave to cool a little, then dip half of each biscuit in the chocolate and leave them on parchment-lined trays somewhere cool to set. Again, the dipped biscuits will keep for up to three days in a tin or lidded plastic container.

Steps:

• 1. This is a great recipe to make with kids as a treat, as it’s very simple and good fun putting the top circle over the chocolate and squashing the edges gently together to stop the chocolate escaping when it cooks.
  2. This is quite a dry mixture, but don’t worry, they are meant to look a bit cracked and rustic, so you can’t really go wrong! If you eat these when they have just been cooked the chocolate is quite runny, and if you eat them cold they are nice and gooey. You’ll need two cutters, one about 4cm and the other about 5cm.
  3. Grease a large baking sheet. Cream the butter and sugar together until pale. Beat in the egg yolks, then add the flour and cocoa powder to make a dough. Turn out and knead, then pop it into the fridge for a while. Preheat the oven to 190ºC/375ºF/gas 5.
  4. On a lightly floured surface, roll about a third of the dough out thinly, then cut out about 30 circles with the smaller cutter (you can do fewer if you want the biscuits bigger). Spread them out on the baking sheet and put a square of chocolate in the middle of each one – make sure you use all the chocolate however many you do. Then roll the rest of the dough out (I always add the leftovers from the first lot of cutting to it and knead it a bit). Cut out the same number of circles with the larger cutter and pop them on top of the chocolate, pressing gently all the way round to seal the edge and keep all the chocolate in.
  5. Cook in the preheated oven for 10 minutes, and eat them hot or cold.