Chocolate Covered Orange Blossom & Cointreau Biscuits

So this was one of the many biscuits we made on our day of many biscuit making. The recipe was originally from Willie's Chocolate Bible with a few tweaks...

What you'll need:

• 170g unsalted butter, softened
• 140g caster sugar
• 1 tbsp orange blossom water
• 1 tbsp cointreau
• 150g plain flour
• 150g fine semolina
• 300g good dark chocolate

Beat sugar and butter in a large bowl till light and fluffy. Pour in blossom water and cointreau. In a seperate bowl soft together both flours, mix them into the butter mixture till it forms a soft dough. Wrap in cling and chill in a fridge for 40min.

Preheat the oven to 150°C, line two baking trays with baking parchment. I rolled our the dough on a semolina covered surface. Roll it out to a thickness of about 1cm, get a 6cm biscuit cutter and cut out about 24 biscits. Space them away from each other on the trays. Put them in the oven for 18-20mins, until golden at the edges.

Remove from the oven leave on the tray for 5min then transfer them to a wire rack.

While they are cooling prepare the chocolate, for dipping biscuits it's best to temper by seeding the chocolate.

Tempering Chocolate:*

Split the chocolate up into 200g & 100g. Roughly chop the 200g chocolate and finely grate the 100g. Place the chopped chocolate in a heatproof dish above a pot of very gently simmering water. If you have a thermometer it really helps here, heat the chocolate to about 45°C and melted. Try not to stir the chocolate and make sure the bowl is not touching the water below it. Once at the correct tempature remove from the pot and stir in the grated chocolate. You want to keep stirring the chocolate till it drops to a temperature of 28°C for dark or 26°C for milk. Once at this temperature place back on top of the gently simmering water and bring the temperature back up to 33°C. Chocolate is now tempered. Taking the time to do this with your chocolate will make everything better in the long run.

*Seemingly 300g of chocolate is the smallest amount of chocolate to successfully temper. I've never really tried anything smaller.

Place the wire rack over a baking tray.vTake each biscuit and dip the top into the choclate mixture, place back on the rack. Once the choclate is cooled. EAT THEM.

Making/baking with the sister 2

  Michelle arrived early Wednesday morning, I had just gotten back the evening beforehand. I had to get everything ready that night! So we had a bit of a busy morning. We got right to it..we went for breakfast. Then went looking for biscuit cutters. Then we decided to start getting ready. We got around to making 3 things.

Gingerbread women, men & men dressed as women

Well we went shopping, found people shaped biscuit cutters and a new rolling pin. We decided it was necessary to have some kind of biscuit baked each time we do this, so this time round gingerbread people! I also wanted these buscuits to go with the Elderflower Icecream for that evenings supper.

Yes I'm aware of the spelling mistake.

What you'll need:

• 350g plain flour
• 1 tablespoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 100g cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes
• 150g light soft brown sugar
• 1 egg, beaten
• 4 tablespoons golden syrup

Preheat oven to 180°C/gas mark 4. Line a baking tray with baking paper.

Sift flour, ginger and bicarb into a bowl. Rub in the butter till you get a sand like texture, then stir in sugar. In a separate bowl whisk together golden syrup and beaten egg in a bowl. Mix it in the dry ingredients to form a dough.

Roll out the dough on a floured surface till is about 3mm thick. Cut out you gingerbread:

• Women
• Men
• Snails
• Whales
• Hedgehogs
• Foxes
• and so on

Place them on the prepared tin, with a tooth pick give them faces and angry eyebrows. Bake for about 10min or till golden. A tip also which I forgot with the first batch, give them a bit of space. Let them cool for about 5min on the tray then transfer to a rack.

Terribly Chocolatly Chocolate Brownies

So we decided Brownies and ginger bread men would be our baked goods for the day. We also made a Whiskey Marmalade Cake!

What you'll need:

• 300g dark chocolate chopped, plus 150g extra
• 100g unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing
• ½ teaspoon sea salt
• 3 eggs
• 50g light brown sugar
• 150g caster sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 100g plain flour

Preheat your oven to 180°C/gas mark 4. Grease a 20cm square baking tin and line with baking paper, get it around the edges too. Place 300g of chocolate, butter and salt in a heatproof bowl over gently simmering water. Let it melt down slowly. In another bowl, break up the eggs and add the sugars and vanilla till its all incorporated.

Whisk it into the melted choclate mixture. Gently fold in flour and 150g of roughly chopped chocolate till just mixed. Pour into prepared tin. Bake for 25min or till it's set. Leave them to cool entirely in the tin. Cut into squares. Eat!

Michelle's Chocolate Cookies

So we were so prepared and moving with great speed and poise Michelle decided she'd make a batch of chocolate cookies. She had been given a recipe from a friend but decided to tweak and change a few things today.

What you'll need:

• 140g unsalted butter, softened
• 90g brown sugar
• 80g caster sugar
• 1 egg, plus 1 egg yolk
• 200g plain flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 150g dark chocolate, min 70%
• 200g chocolate chips

Beat butter and sugars in a bowl till it's nice and creamy. Add the whole egg and mix, the add the yolk and mix again. Sift the flour, salt and bicarbonate together and gently mix into the mix. Leave to once side. Place a bowl over a pop of gently simmering water and melt down the 150g of dark chocolate. Once with melted add the the mixture. Mix well to combine. The mix is stiff so don't worry if it's difficult to stir. Finally mix in chips.

Preheat your over to 180ºC/ gas 4. Line 2 baking trays with parchment paper. Using an icecream scoop pick up big helping of the cookie mix and place on the trays with a good with of space between each mound. we made rather large cookies today so we just had 10 mounds. You could easily half the size for more cookies in the end. Bake for around 25min if you are making large cookies, otherwise jsut 18-20 for smaller. They'll come out of the oven a little soft. leave them on the tray for 5min then place onto a wire rack to cook completely.

Making/Baking with the Sister.

What a day we had! Michelle arrived at 9:30 or so this morning. I knew we had to go show a wonderful tourist around the city in the afternoon. So we had to get as much done in as little time as possible. With Michelle learning some of these recipes I am reluctant to do any prep work and we start everything from scratch. The only thing I got around to doing yesterday was leaving the freezer bowl for the icecream in a freezer. So in the order that they emerged from the kitchen!

Click of the pictures to go to the posts! Ah-Yay!

Michelle gently holds her new cookies:

It was great to see Michelle's mind off things for a while today. We had a laugh. For people who don't know which is the majority of you, at the start of the year we lost our Father and Grandad one week apart. It's been particulary hard for my little sister and sometimes I worry that I don't know what to do for her. If this helps her feel better in any little way I'd gladly spend all week creating tasty things with her. But at least for the moment it'll be once a week and it'll be wonderful. Thanks for reading!