Tuesday 7 May 2013

Chocolate truffle biscuits

These little beauties are the first thing that I have made from the Hummingbird bakery book, Home Sweet Home.

The book has a delicious looking array of treats. This particular weekend I really wanted to bake from it, my birthday was at the end of March and I could not believe I had not got round to anything from it, I have been so busy. Being immensely busy however meant I barely had the energy to turn the oven on, let alone do justice to some of the delightful looking bakes in this book. I settled on these biscuits as they looked easy, yummy and I had all the ingredients in. Well kind of. I substituted amaretto for almond extract and brandy!

These are one of those bakes that are better than expected. I like chocolate, I like biscuits, so I fully expected to like these. I did not realise they would be so good. They really do have that truffle-y flavour in biscuit form. They have an intense flavour and two of these beauties with a cup of tea really do satisfy chocolate cravings after a day at work. Yum.


Chocolate truffle biscuits

makes 14

80g plain flour
25g cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking powder
85g golden caster sugar
25g butter
1 large egg
10ml amaretto, or a tsp of almond extract, or a combination of almond extract and brandy
icing sugar, for rolling

In a bowl combine the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and sugar. Rub in the butter until the mix resembles breadcrumbs. 

Mix the egg and amaretto (or substitute) together and add to the dry ingredients. Mix until all the ingredients come together into a uniform dough. This takes a couple of minutes but keep at it, I promise you will get there. 

Wrap the dough in clingfilm and refrigerate for 30-45 minutes.

Line a baking sheet or two with baking paper and preheat the oven to 180C/160C FAN. 

Split the dough into 14 equal pieces and roll into balls. Roll the balls in the icing sugar to coat them and place onto the baking tray, leaving at least an inch between them as they will flatten slightly as they bake.

Bake in the preheated oven for 10 minutes. Allow the biscuits to cool on the baking sheet for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.


These biscuits keep well for a few days in an airtight tin. Not sure if it is just me but I think the flavour of the brandy is developing more and more each day.

4 comments:

  1. oooh, I love the way these have crackled on top, so pretty!... great recipe x

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    1. Thanks, my first thought when I took them out of the oven was how pretty they were!

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  2. Those look absolutely perfect. I had a go at making some at Christmas, but my icing sugar wasn't nearly as well defined as yours. From reading what you've done, maybe refrigeration of the dough is the key.

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    1. Thank you. I did not do anything special to my icing sugar so maybe you are right and the fridge helped.

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