Chocolate Biscuits with Soft Chocolate Centres

If you have ever refused a home made chocolate biscuit, this blog post is not for you!  If, however, you'll eat anything, plus you prefer home made biscuits to bought ones, read on....

Always on the look-out for new chocolate biscuit recipes, I thought I'd try this one from Jamie Oliver, where the chocolate biscuits have a soft, melty chocolate centre.  Billed as "super easy", it is a child-friendly recipe - maybe I should have had a child to help!   The result is pictured - ok, chocolate doesn't photograph well -  but I wasn't that convinced that the result was particularly adult-friendly....  The stated quantity was 30, but I made probably only about 22-24, and they were very thick.  My testers polished them off, but I felt they were quite industrial.....   Hopefully you will learn from my mistakes!

Jamie Oliver Chocolate Biscuits with soft chocolate centres

Jamie Oliver’s Chocolate Biscuits with Soft Chocolate Centres

5oz/150g butter

5oz/150g caster sugar

2 egg yolks

9oz/260g self raising flour

1oz/30g cocoa powder

30 squares good quality chocolate (milk, white or plain)

2 biscuit cutters – 1 approx 4cm, the other 5cm.

Preheat the oven to 190 deg C.   Grease 2 large baking sheets, or use parchment.   Cream together the butter and sugar until pale, then beat in the egg yolks.  Add the flour and cocoa powder to form a dough (Jamie notes that this is quite a dry mixture).  Knead the dough lightly and then let it rest in the fridge for 15 minutes.

Roll 1/3 of the dough out on a floured surface (I prefer to roll between two sheets of parchment).  Cut out about 30 biscuits with the smaller cutter.  Spread them out on the baking sheet and put a square of chocolate in the middle of each one.   Roll out the rest of the dough including the leftovers, and cut out the same number of circles.  Put the larger biscuits onto the smaller ones and press around the edges to seal in the chocolate – don’t press too hard or the edges of the chocolate pierce the dough!

Cook for about 10 minutes, and eat hot or cold.  When they are hot, the chocolate is supposed to be runny.