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Chocolate Swirl Biscuits

- Michael 3 Comments

Hands up, who likes biscuits? Or should I say, hands up who doesn’t like biscuits? There is a time and place for cookies; and I know a great many people that love a good chewy American styled cookie. But what about the humble biscuit? I am in the camp of “I buy these often so I can have one or two, but will end up eating the whole pack in one go and then complain about being out of shape”, but I rarely actually make them, opting normal for the aforementioned cookies., like the Americanised man I claim not to be. However who can not want to make and eat something that looks like a swiss roll, but is actually a biscuit? Chocolate Swirl cookies look good, aren’t hard to make and taste even better. Kinda like shortbread but with a chocolatey extra.

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Chocolate Chip Cookies with Peanut Buttercream Filling

- Michael 1 Comment

Peanut butter. It’s back. Yes, I think I have a problem. I’ve been trying to avoid using it for a bit, because so much of my stuff contained it. Then my friend Naomi happened across a facebook group full of recipes and spent an evening posting things on my wall along the lines of “OOOO MAKE THIS” followed by “ACTUALLY NO, THIS!”. The majority of them caught my eye, but I decided they’d be better for an occasion. I picked out something I could do that would be easy to share. Chocolate Chip Cookies with Peanut Buttercream filling. The key with these is to make sure that the cookies are that little bit chewy. It takes them from ordeal, to incredible.

Peanut butter filling

The other problem I had was that they didn’t spread as much as I’d expected. This meant that they ended up a bit tall and bulky. The later ones I baked for a minute or two less, and squashed them slightly with the back of a spoon to make them a little thinner.  Unfortunately I lost the original source for this piece, so I don’t know who to credit.

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Chocolate Chip Espresso Cookies with Peanut Buttercream Filling
 
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Ingredients
  • For the cookies
  • 130g flour
  • 88.5g cocoa powder
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • ¼ tsp salt
  • 120g unsalted butter, softened
  • 134g granulated sugar
  • 55g firmly packed brown sugar
  • 1 large egg
  • ½ tsp vanilla extract
  • 110g chocolate chips
  • 1 tsp instant espresso powder
  • For the filling
  • 256g Powdered sugar
  • 90g unsalted butter, softened
  • 113g Creamy peanut butter
  • (Possibly) 1-2tsp milk
Instructions
  1. Mix together the dry ingredients (flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt) and set aside.
  2. In the bowl of your electric mixer, cream together the butter and the sugars until fluffy.
  3. Beat in the egg, then the vanilla. Add the espresso and beat until combined.
  4. On a slow speed, add the flour mixture in three stages, each time until it has just combined. After the last addition, add in the chocolate chips.
  5. Place the dough in the fridge and allow to chill for at least an hour, for it to firm.
  6. Once you feel it has chilled for long enough, remove from the fridge. Preheat the oven to 180°C (160°C fan).
  7. Divide the dough into two equal sections. On a clean surface, form the dough into two equal rods. Rolling them out until they are around 12 inches in length. If they are shorter than this, don’t worry too much, you’ll just have larger cookies!
  8. Cut up the rods at intervals of about 1 inch.
  9. Place on greaseproof sheets in the center of the oven, around 1 inch apart.
  10. Bake for between 10-15 minutes. You want them to still be soft and chewy so it may be worth testing with one or two to begin with. I started baking them for around 13 and cut it down to 11 in the end. (As I said above, I pushed down some of them with the back of a spoon to make them spread better).
  11. Allow to cool partially before transferring to a wire rack.
  12. For the frosting. Starting on a slow speed, cream together the butter and the powdered sugar. Slowly increase the speed to medium and add the peanut butter. You may find that you need a small amount of milk to make it combine better.
  13. Spread on the top layer of a cookie, being fairly liberal with the amount, and then push down another cookie on top.

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