Children's chocolate biscuits
Children’s chocolate biscuits
“This is the recipe I always use” (Nigella, p503)
Let me start by writing that I won’t be blogging at all next weekend. You see, my best friend from home – Louise – is travelling up from Devon to spend the weekend with me. I have promised her a really girlie weekend and we are spending Friday night in with some DVDs and an evening out on the town on Saturday night. I am not much of a one for going out on a Saturday, but it is sometimes nice – isn’t it? – to step outside of ones comfort zone. Besides, I haven’t “hit the town,” as it were, since I lost all the weight and I suppose it *would* be nice to leave the house on a Saturday night feeling confident and looking good (touch wood). Next weekend also marks the beginning of half-term (thank God!). This first half-term has been an utterly unrivalled experience for me. More than one person has told me that you never forget your first term with your own class and I fully appreciate that statement. Another teacher told me recently that your first term as an NQT is the hardest that you’ll ever do, and by that I am very pleased because although this term *has* been hard, I have certainly coped with it and genuinely enjoyed every minute of it, even down to the late parents evenings and the early morning starts. So, the next time I blog it will be the weekend of the half-term, so expect a much more relaxed and happy me! Oh, and whilst I remember, although I won’t be making any elaborate meals next weekend, Louise and I usually enjoy some girlie pottering around the kitchen, and I have promised her that we’ll make fairy cakes on Saturday afternoon. I’m going to make the fairy cakes from How to Eat again – how could I not? – and so as usual, expect some updated photographs on that particular post at some point next week.
I suppose that I have been rather disillusioned with this blog over the last few recipes. I was really disappointed with the chicory salad and hoped that the chilli con carne would make up for it. Anyone reading my last post however, will know that I was neither too enamoured by the chilli con carne. Christopher is typically more mutinous than I, and he was all for taking a week off from this blog and playing for our culinary privileges by ordering in. Ever optimistic, however, I have every faith that those were just two dud recipes and that now I can get on with cooking, eating and *enjoying* Nigella’s recipes. It is never nice though to spend ages on a meal, only to dislike it – it always makes me feel so inept, and so I do hope that this new recipe will restore my faith in my own culinary abilities. And I would like to point out that even though I did dislike the previous two recipes, I have taken things away from them. I was thinking about chilli con carne the other day, and was pondering the fact that Nigella’s recipe has provided me with a really useful template for chilli that I can now adapt to make my own. Watch this space, because no doubt I will make my own changes and report back.
Not only am I hoping that this recipe restores my faith in Nigella’s cooking, but I am also really anticipating it because it marks the start of a new section – the “chocolate” section. The section is rather a long one – turn to the index in How to Eat and see for yourself – so expect to see a lot of chocolate adorning my blog over the next few months. To a lot of people, approaching the chocolate section would be their idea of absolute heaven – and I don’t disregard chocolate’s status as a decadent, luxurious foodstuff - , but unlike a lot of people I know, I am not crazily addicted to chocolate. When I have a real food craving, it is usually for the savoury over the sweet. To be frank, usually it is nothing that a good slice of blue cheese can’t sort out! And when I *do* have a sweet craving, it is usually for something other than a hunk of chocolate. In fact, 9 times out of 10, it is for those yoghurt-coated dried banana chips that you can buy from most petrol stations and health-food shops – I really don’t know why I like those things so much. However, that’s not to say that I don’t *ever* crave chocolate and I will be honest, there are moments when nothing else will do! Moments when that smooth, velvety chocolaty sweetness is needed to soothe and delight! Although it surely must be a platitude to say, I truly think that it is in times of stress and crisis when chocolate really comes into its own and I funnily enough find myself longing for chocolate during those times. I was thinking the other day about chocolate and how much I like it, and I came to the conclusion that my favourite all-time chocolate is white chocolate. In times of intense emergency, I will stoop to a Milky Bar from the corner store, but my real favourite is a Green & Blacks white chocolate bar – yum! And that got me around to thinking about my favourite chocolate dessert, because after all, that is what would be more similar to the kind of things found in How to Eat than chocolate bars. Truth be told, I can tolerate pretty much *any* chocolate dessert, but my absolute favourite chocolate dessert was eaten on my birthday last year and was a white chocolate and banana tarte tatin with roasted praline ice-cream. Now I know that I won’t recreate that here. For one thing, Nigella’s recipes are far more unpretentious and homespun than those found in a restaurant, and for another, there are no white chocolate recipes in How to Eat, but I do hope to experience that utter pleasure again over the next few recipes. And although I haven’t used chocolate in my cooking a great deal, I did make Nigella’s “alcoholic hot chocolate” for a bedtime snack for Chris and I when I first purchased Feast, and if that recipe is anything to go by then I am onto a winner with this section.
Anyone that reads my blog regularly – and I hope that there are some people who do – will recognise these biscuits, as I have made them before – sort of! They are actually the chocolate version of the children’s party biscuits which I made last year as part of the “biscuit” section. There are two main changes in this recipe. Firstly, I am replacing 25g of the plain flour with cocoa, and secondly in the last recipe I used grated nutmeg and here I am going to use ground cinnamon – both alternatives suggested by Nigella. Thinking about that recipe, I remember that I liked it a lot, and despite the changes, the recipe is essentially the same, so I’ll copy and paste some of the “results” section of my previous post here. “The taste of the biscuits is divine. They taste both buttery and light and sweet without being cloying. In fact, even without the visual appeal of the icing, these biscuits stand alone as absolutely delightful to eat in their own right.” That sounds like a very good review, and I seem to remember that I awarded them 5/5 – high praise indeed.
Apart from the fact that I have sort of made these before – or at least have had some experience with them – I am eagerly anticipating them. I have made all of the biscuits from How to Eat, and I have loved them all. Looking back through the biscuit section, I am freshly reminded how much I enjoyed those recipes. Those wonderful savoury cheese stars remain my favourite, but I am also reminded of the digestive biscuits (which I must have made many dozen times since then), the langue de chat, the macaroons (which are now a favourite of my dad) and those smokily aromatic pistachio crescents. In fact, it is the case that I have never made a bad biscuit recipe of Nigella’s.
And that fact is not the only reason why I am eagerly anticipating this recipe. It has such wonderful ingredients in it. For a start, I love all the usual rigmarole – the cocoa powder etc and also I love light brown sugar so much more than the usually specified caster sugar. I also love golden syrup intensely, and will cheerily eat anything in which it features as an ingredient.
Now obviously these biscuits are “dessert” if you like, and so I needed to think of something suitable as a main course. To me, chocolate biscuits scream out “celebration” and “happiness” and so I wanted something to echo that optimistic tone. I settled upon another recipe from Tessa Kiros’s “Apples for Jam” – hamburgers with all the trimmings. Tessa’s recipe is amazing. There are so many accompaniments to her homemade hamburgers, not least homemade pink sauce, caramelised red onions, melting blue cheese and tomato, lettuce and gherkins. The recipe seems gorgeous, celebratory and suitably party-ish. I was just saying to Chris the other day, I have never yet cooked a dud recipe from that book and I’m sure that these hamburgers won’t disappoint. With the hamburgers I am going to serve fish and chip shop-style chips. Surely the perfect accompaniment! Oh, and to compliment that happy, celebratory feel, I am going to crack open a bottle of Asti to drink alongside. So, this is our happy Saturday night party-themed meal: Hamburgers with chips and chocolate biscuits for dessert.
In terms of quantities, I am halving quantities of Tessa’s hamburgers intended for 6, to make 3 burgers (one each and a spare!) and halving quantities of all of the accompaniments, bar the pink sauce, which I want to keep in a jar for the week. In terms of the chocolate biscuits, I am keeping quantities the same as specified in HTE. I know that Nigella makes 60 biscuits (or thereabouts) with the quantities, but I plan on making the full amount and taking the leftovers to school on Monday to be eaten in the staffroom.
I suppose that I have been rather disillusioned with this blog over the last few recipes. I was really disappointed with the chicory salad and hoped that the chilli con carne would make up for it. Anyone reading my last post however, will know that I was neither too enamoured by the chilli con carne. Christopher is typically more mutinous than I, and he was all for taking a week off from this blog and playing for our culinary privileges by ordering in. Ever optimistic, however, I have every faith that those were just two dud recipes and that now I can get on with cooking, eating and *enjoying* Nigella’s recipes. It is never nice though to spend ages on a meal, only to dislike it – it always makes me feel so inept, and so I do hope that this new recipe will restore my faith in my own culinary abilities. And I would like to point out that even though I did dislike the previous two recipes, I have taken things away from them. I was thinking about chilli con carne the other day, and was pondering the fact that Nigella’s recipe has provided me with a really useful template for chilli that I can now adapt to make my own. Watch this space, because no doubt I will make my own changes and report back.
Not only am I hoping that this recipe restores my faith in Nigella’s cooking, but I am also really anticipating it because it marks the start of a new section – the “chocolate” section. The section is rather a long one – turn to the index in How to Eat and see for yourself – so expect to see a lot of chocolate adorning my blog over the next few months. To a lot of people, approaching the chocolate section would be their idea of absolute heaven – and I don’t disregard chocolate’s status as a decadent, luxurious foodstuff - , but unlike a lot of people I know, I am not crazily addicted to chocolate. When I have a real food craving, it is usually for the savoury over the sweet. To be frank, usually it is nothing that a good slice of blue cheese can’t sort out! And when I *do* have a sweet craving, it is usually for something other than a hunk of chocolate. In fact, 9 times out of 10, it is for those yoghurt-coated dried banana chips that you can buy from most petrol stations and health-food shops – I really don’t know why I like those things so much. However, that’s not to say that I don’t *ever* crave chocolate and I will be honest, there are moments when nothing else will do! Moments when that smooth, velvety chocolaty sweetness is needed to soothe and delight! Although it surely must be a platitude to say, I truly think that it is in times of stress and crisis when chocolate really comes into its own and I funnily enough find myself longing for chocolate during those times. I was thinking the other day about chocolate and how much I like it, and I came to the conclusion that my favourite all-time chocolate is white chocolate. In times of intense emergency, I will stoop to a Milky Bar from the corner store, but my real favourite is a Green & Blacks white chocolate bar – yum! And that got me around to thinking about my favourite chocolate dessert, because after all, that is what would be more similar to the kind of things found in How to Eat than chocolate bars. Truth be told, I can tolerate pretty much *any* chocolate dessert, but my absolute favourite chocolate dessert was eaten on my birthday last year and was a white chocolate and banana tarte tatin with roasted praline ice-cream. Now I know that I won’t recreate that here. For one thing, Nigella’s recipes are far more unpretentious and homespun than those found in a restaurant, and for another, there are no white chocolate recipes in How to Eat, but I do hope to experience that utter pleasure again over the next few recipes. And although I haven’t used chocolate in my cooking a great deal, I did make Nigella’s “alcoholic hot chocolate” for a bedtime snack for Chris and I when I first purchased Feast, and if that recipe is anything to go by then I am onto a winner with this section.
Anyone that reads my blog regularly – and I hope that there are some people who do – will recognise these biscuits, as I have made them before – sort of! They are actually the chocolate version of the children’s party biscuits which I made last year as part of the “biscuit” section. There are two main changes in this recipe. Firstly, I am replacing 25g of the plain flour with cocoa, and secondly in the last recipe I used grated nutmeg and here I am going to use ground cinnamon – both alternatives suggested by Nigella. Thinking about that recipe, I remember that I liked it a lot, and despite the changes, the recipe is essentially the same, so I’ll copy and paste some of the “results” section of my previous post here. “The taste of the biscuits is divine. They taste both buttery and light and sweet without being cloying. In fact, even without the visual appeal of the icing, these biscuits stand alone as absolutely delightful to eat in their own right.” That sounds like a very good review, and I seem to remember that I awarded them 5/5 – high praise indeed.
Apart from the fact that I have sort of made these before – or at least have had some experience with them – I am eagerly anticipating them. I have made all of the biscuits from How to Eat, and I have loved them all. Looking back through the biscuit section, I am freshly reminded how much I enjoyed those recipes. Those wonderful savoury cheese stars remain my favourite, but I am also reminded of the digestive biscuits (which I must have made many dozen times since then), the langue de chat, the macaroons (which are now a favourite of my dad) and those smokily aromatic pistachio crescents. In fact, it is the case that I have never made a bad biscuit recipe of Nigella’s.
And that fact is not the only reason why I am eagerly anticipating this recipe. It has such wonderful ingredients in it. For a start, I love all the usual rigmarole – the cocoa powder etc and also I love light brown sugar so much more than the usually specified caster sugar. I also love golden syrup intensely, and will cheerily eat anything in which it features as an ingredient.
Now obviously these biscuits are “dessert” if you like, and so I needed to think of something suitable as a main course. To me, chocolate biscuits scream out “celebration” and “happiness” and so I wanted something to echo that optimistic tone. I settled upon another recipe from Tessa Kiros’s “Apples for Jam” – hamburgers with all the trimmings. Tessa’s recipe is amazing. There are so many accompaniments to her homemade hamburgers, not least homemade pink sauce, caramelised red onions, melting blue cheese and tomato, lettuce and gherkins. The recipe seems gorgeous, celebratory and suitably party-ish. I was just saying to Chris the other day, I have never yet cooked a dud recipe from that book and I’m sure that these hamburgers won’t disappoint. With the hamburgers I am going to serve fish and chip shop-style chips. Surely the perfect accompaniment! Oh, and to compliment that happy, celebratory feel, I am going to crack open a bottle of Asti to drink alongside. So, this is our happy Saturday night party-themed meal: Hamburgers with chips and chocolate biscuits for dessert.
In terms of quantities, I am halving quantities of Tessa’s hamburgers intended for 6, to make 3 burgers (one each and a spare!) and halving quantities of all of the accompaniments, bar the pink sauce, which I want to keep in a jar for the week. In terms of the chocolate biscuits, I am keeping quantities the same as specified in HTE. I know that Nigella makes 60 biscuits (or thereabouts) with the quantities, but I plan on making the full amount and taking the leftovers to school on Monday to be eaten in the staffroom.
Ingredients: Everything for the biscuits is easy enough to come by. Because you will probably want the best flour and cocoa powder you can come by for this (due to the fact that the cocoa powder is the only thing that makes the biscuits chocolate), may I recommend using OO flour? It is of such an obvious high quality and as an added bonus does not require sieving, so velvety smooth is it. And it is easily available in my local Tescos, and was even in Devon. In terms of the cocoa, I used Green & Blacks cocoa powder, which is obviously much better than many of the cocoa powders available in supermarkets. And, as I say, I would recommend using the best ingredients you can afford for this. In terms of the sugar, I used soft brown sugar instead of muscovado as it was all I had in the house (and was sanctioned by Nigella besides). Now, I did make some specialist purchases for this recipe. Due to the fact that I am finally getting a half decent salary for the first time in my life, I decided to treat myself and order some supplies for biscuit-making from http://www.janeasher.com. I treated myself to some new heart shaped cookie cutters (in various sizes), some red icing paste (to compliment the hearts) and some edible silver-white glitter to adorn the biscuits (I couldn’t resist. I make no apology for my need for glitter!). Not to tempt you to get out your wallets in a similar manner, but the items arrived the next day, were packaged beautifully and were a real steal (in a manner of speaking).
Everything for the hamburgers was also easy to come by. I brought the minced beef for the burgers from my butcher as usual and as I couldn’t find the thyme in Tescos (to be cooked alongside the caramelised red onions), I brought it from our local farm shop.
Everything for the hamburgers was also easy to come by. I brought the minced beef for the burgers from my butcher as usual and as I couldn’t find the thyme in Tescos (to be cooked alongside the caramelised red onions), I brought it from our local farm shop.
Price: Not counting the specialist equipment, I didn’t need a lot for this recipe. The butter, eggs and syrup totalled £3.87. However, as I said, there was a lot that I didn’t need for this, namely the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, ground cinnamon, sugar and icing sugar.
(My new purchases - the red food colouring paste, the heart shaped biscuit cutters and the edible sparkles)
(The sticky mixture of golden syrup and beaten egg)
Method: These biscuits are actually very easy to make. I made them during the afternoon, and really enjoyed the preparation and pottering around, as is my way pretty much every weekend. One thing to bear in mind if you are opting for full quantities is that the recipe involves a lot of dough and therefore a consequent lot of rolling out and icing. Hardly a problem for me because I love all that kind f thing, but if you are making them out of duty and not pleasure, I suggest you halve quantities to arm yourself against a nervous breakdown.
So, as I say, these are very easy to make. If you are using OO flour, the job is eased a great deal by the fact it doesn’t involve sieving. Basically, the flour, cocoa, salt, baking powder and cinnamon are stirred together and then the butter is rubbed in. This is hardly a problem, but just takes a few minutes. I love the moment when all of the butter is finally rubbed in, and the mixture resembles velvety sand, which you just know will have a delightfully short texture and be buttery beyond all measure.
It is then a case of stirring egg together with golden syrup and adding that sticky, treacley mass to the chocolate sand. I know I have mentioned this before, but treacle really is a nightmare to work with, so go careful. I found that the mixture didn’t cohere to form sticky enough dough after the first egg, and I found that it took a further 2 teaspoons of a beaten second egg before it did so to my liking. And although from reading the recipe, it seems as though Nigella is warning of almost unworkable sticky dough, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Let me tell you, this dough is a dream to work with. It rolls out easily, it re-clumps easily, it is easy to lift out your stamped-out shapes and really, you can use every last scrap. In fact, Nigella makes about 60 biscuits from the mixture, and I made 55, which sounds about right, given that some of my heart cutters are rather on the large side.
Nigella says the biscuits can take anything from 12-20 minutes before they are properly cooked, and I found both lots of mine (that is both discs of dough) to take about 15 minutes. And you will have to judge this by touch, because they are on the dark side of golden in colour. Oh, and I used bake-o-glide to prevent any chance of sticking and so I recommend that or any form of non-stick baking parchment.
When the biscuits were cool I iced them, using the quantities of icing sugar and water suggested in HTE. Now, here is where I come unstuck rather. Last time I made these, there was a problem in that my icing was far too thick and stiff, which made it difficult to ice with. I recall writing that I was none-too impressed with my unskilled and messy icing. Well, the texture of the icing following Nigella’s quantities was *perfect.* It was stiff, but still spreadable – a joy to ice with. And to neaten my icing, I used the back of a spoon *and* a rubber spatula to spread the icing over each biscuit. My problem was that they *still* looked messy. I had such a job using the right amount of icing so that the icing would coat the biscuit, but not drip down the sides into a bloody pool. I know I got some right (and those are the ones that I used in the picture!), but for every appealing one, there is a sloppy one with too much or not enough icing. I guess icing isn’t a science, but an art and I guess also that icing is something that gets better with time, but I would like to be a better and neater icer, so if anyone has any tips then please alert me to them. The biscuits in Feast, for example, are so beautifully and perfectly iced, and I would love to approach that standard. Perhaps there is a piece of specialist equipment that I’m missing out on; who knows?
Other than my icing-related disaster, these are so easy to make and just a joy to work with. If you want to make a biscuit, but are put off by the rolling out and cutting, then these should truly be your first port of call.
So, as I say, these are very easy to make. If you are using OO flour, the job is eased a great deal by the fact it doesn’t involve sieving. Basically, the flour, cocoa, salt, baking powder and cinnamon are stirred together and then the butter is rubbed in. This is hardly a problem, but just takes a few minutes. I love the moment when all of the butter is finally rubbed in, and the mixture resembles velvety sand, which you just know will have a delightfully short texture and be buttery beyond all measure.
It is then a case of stirring egg together with golden syrup and adding that sticky, treacley mass to the chocolate sand. I know I have mentioned this before, but treacle really is a nightmare to work with, so go careful. I found that the mixture didn’t cohere to form sticky enough dough after the first egg, and I found that it took a further 2 teaspoons of a beaten second egg before it did so to my liking. And although from reading the recipe, it seems as though Nigella is warning of almost unworkable sticky dough, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Let me tell you, this dough is a dream to work with. It rolls out easily, it re-clumps easily, it is easy to lift out your stamped-out shapes and really, you can use every last scrap. In fact, Nigella makes about 60 biscuits from the mixture, and I made 55, which sounds about right, given that some of my heart cutters are rather on the large side.
Nigella says the biscuits can take anything from 12-20 minutes before they are properly cooked, and I found both lots of mine (that is both discs of dough) to take about 15 minutes. And you will have to judge this by touch, because they are on the dark side of golden in colour. Oh, and I used bake-o-glide to prevent any chance of sticking and so I recommend that or any form of non-stick baking parchment.
When the biscuits were cool I iced them, using the quantities of icing sugar and water suggested in HTE. Now, here is where I come unstuck rather. Last time I made these, there was a problem in that my icing was far too thick and stiff, which made it difficult to ice with. I recall writing that I was none-too impressed with my unskilled and messy icing. Well, the texture of the icing following Nigella’s quantities was *perfect.* It was stiff, but still spreadable – a joy to ice with. And to neaten my icing, I used the back of a spoon *and* a rubber spatula to spread the icing over each biscuit. My problem was that they *still* looked messy. I had such a job using the right amount of icing so that the icing would coat the biscuit, but not drip down the sides into a bloody pool. I know I got some right (and those are the ones that I used in the picture!), but for every appealing one, there is a sloppy one with too much or not enough icing. I guess icing isn’t a science, but an art and I guess also that icing is something that gets better with time, but I would like to be a better and neater icer, so if anyone has any tips then please alert me to them. The biscuits in Feast, for example, are so beautifully and perfectly iced, and I would love to approach that standard. Perhaps there is a piece of specialist equipment that I’m missing out on; who knows?
Other than my icing-related disaster, these are so easy to make and just a joy to work with. If you want to make a biscuit, but are put off by the rolling out and cutting, then these should truly be your first port of call.
(The mixture of flour, cocoa, baking powder, salt and cinnamon)
(With the rubbed-in butter and brown sugar)
(With the syrupy-eggy mixture added to form a dough)
Result: Okay, so the biscuits which I had iced properly and were happy with looked absolutely gorgeous. They just looked so pretty and dainty. To me, the pretty heart design, coupled with the Christmas red icing made them look picturesque and somehow unreal – like something you might find in a tea party in Alice in Wonderland. Somehow, they looked so pretty and dainty that they almost seemed artificial! I should perhaps mention that the edible shards of white-gold glitter looked stunning. I didn’t sprinkle the precious glitter on every biscuit, which is why you won’t see a lot of it in the picture, but where I did, it just looked fabulous. It was bright and sparkling and positively gleaming. It certainly took nothing away from the pretty and delightful appearance of these party biscuits. Okay, so there were those biscuits – hidden away – which didn’t look as good as the picture-perfect ones. Those biscuits had either too much icing dripping down the sides, or too little – scraped meanly about the surface with a spatula. Unless anyone gives me a failsafe icing method, then I guess I can make my peace with that. After all, they are homemade and I would rather eat a homemade ramshackle biscuit over a perfect Tescos specimen any day!
But all of that would pale into insignificance if the biscuits didn’t taste any good. You will hardly be surprised, given that I have made a very similar version before, but this recipe made for absolutely stunning biscuits. Honestly, these biscuits were delightful to eat. They were very tasty and very addictive. I put two in my bowl after dinner, and went on to eat another two (or three!) later on in the evening! As Nigella writes, with the addition of cinnamon they are very reminiscent of gingerbread. Certainly, the cinnamon lends a hot, aromatic spiciness that infuses the whole biscuit and makes it seem almost festive with its spicy warmth. The biscuits are not completely overpowered by the taste of cinnamon, however. Certainly, I wouldn’t want any more cinnamon added, but equally, I don’t feel that I would have preferred any less. I like that festive warmth and appreciate the gentle, spicy notes provided by this biscuit. Just a thought; because of the addition of cinnamon and the perfect texture (see later), I can’t help but feel as though these would make the perfect Christmas gift for someone. Another thing that I loved about the taste of these biscuits, is the fact that they were very buttery, and it was this creamy butteriness that complimented the spicy hotness of the cinnamon. I really appreciated the fact that these biscuits were not overly sweet. In my opinion, a biscuit *shouldn’t* be temple-achingly sweet and these were perfect. They were sweet without being too sweet, and rather the sweetness manifested itself as golden, darker, more caramelised nutty background sweetness. Manifesting, I am sure, from that wonderful nutty light brown sugar and the syrupy dark, almost toffeed sweetness of the golden syrup. Because of this, I feel as though these were very “adult” biscuits, with that hot aromatic cinnamon and the fact that they weren’t sugary sweet. I should, perhaps, mention the chocolate element –given that this is the chocolate section. These were certainly chocolate biscuits. And the chocolate flavour went so well with the cinnamon that I now see where the inspiration for Nigella’s chocolate gingerbread comes from! The only thing I would say, is that the biscuits were not *that* chocolaty. Traditionally, I have always been suspicious of anything that is “chocolate” only in as much as it has cocoa powder in it. I am happy to say that I didn’t feel as though this suffered for the cocoa powder, but certainly I feel as if the biscuits could have been even *more* chocolaty. The icing was also lovely. It was very sweet and light, and was absolutely the perfect compliment to the spice in the biscuit. I would go so far as to say that the biscuits *should* be iced, if only for that spicy-sweet combination.
I have mentioned the taste, but allow me to wax lyrical on the texture. The texture of these biscuits was wonderful. As I have said, the biscuits were truly buttery, with a very short and crumbly texture, almost like an aromatic shortbread. Because they were so easy to manhandle and generally pliable, you would be forgiven for thinking of them as rubbery in texture, but that doesn’t at all do justice to these crumbly, flaky, buttery and light biscuits. They had the added bonus of becoming almost melting, damp in moist in each bite.
It is interesting to consider which biscuit I preferred – these or the previously-made children’s party biscuits. After a lot of deliberation, I have no choice but to write that I prefer these. There wasn’t much in it, but it is certainly true that I preferred the warm, aromatic spiciness of the cinnamon and the slight chocolatiness that complimented the spice so well. Although, in saying this, if I were to make these biscuits as Nigella intended – for a children’s party – I would make the earlier ones. They are more universally appealing with their gentle spiciness and perhaps look better – their blonde untroubled surface better for garish decoration.
I should perhaps mention the whole meal here, which was absolutely gorgeous. Tessa’s hamburgers were stunning – hand on heart, the best I’ve ever eaten! The burger itself was stunning, the pink sauce was gorgeously tangy and the addition of caramelised onions was inspired. Just eating that fully loaded hamburger with chips was a real treat. Needless to say, Chris adored the burgers and said that they are the best that he has ever eaten. In fact, what with these biscuits for dessert, this was, if not the best meal I’ve ever eaten, certainly the best I’ve eaten this year!
So, overall, these biscuits were delightful. They looked stunning, tasted wonderful and had an unrivalled texture. My faith in Nigella is well and truly restored.
(Some of my biscuits - pre-oven)
(The gorgeous biscuits straight from the oven)
Other person’s perspective: Chris said that these looked really nice and tasted really good and nice to eat. He loved the combination of chocolate and cinnamon. He described the texture as “perfect.”
(The wonderful dazzling icing!)
(My candle-lit dessert!)
Future changes: Firstly, I really would like to make my biscuits prettier by icing them more artistically. Secondly, I do feel as though the biscuits could have been chocolatier. Perhaps they could be laced with a handful of dark chocolate chips. These would have to be good, mind you, to compliment the very grown up and aromatic flavour of these biscuits. Chris also said that he would have preferred these a bit more chocolaty. Either that, or he suggested a form of chocolate icing, which I can’t help thinking would be a very good idea. I particularly am coming around to the idea of a ganache.
(I wouldn't feel right if I didn't share this photograph. So, here it is in all its glory - hamburgers from Tessa Kiros' Apples for Jam)
Rating: A certain 5/5 from me and a 4/5 from Chris as he thought that they could have been more chocolaty.
