Sweet Treats: Chocolate and coconut biscuits

It’s been ages since I’ve baked on a Wednesday and I’d been meaning to bake biscuits since I bought these gorgeous star cutters from John Lewis around Christmastime.

I got the basic biscuit recipe from one of my favourite childhood cookbooks: Jane Asher’s Eats for Treats.

Cut-out biscuits

Ingredients:

·         150g self-raising flour

·         75g butter

·         50g caster sugar

·         1 egg

·         Few drops of vanilla essence

Method:

·         Preheat the oven to gas mark 4 and grease two baking trays (or line with greaseproof paper!)

·         Pour the flour into a bowl and cut the butter in small pieces before adding to the flour. Rub together to form fine breadcrumbs

·         Add the sugar and mix with a spoon

·         Break the egg into a small cup and whisk. Add two tablespoons of egg to the mixture and add the vanilla essence

·         Mix using a spoon/fork, or hands if easier. This may take a while to form a ball

·         Knead the dough until smooth on a well-floured surface

·         Wrap the dough in Clingfilm and refrigerate for 30 minutes

·         Take out of the fridge and roll out until ¼ inch thick. Cut out shapes

·         Place on baking tray and bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown

·         Leave to cool

For the chocolate and coconut:

I had Christmas and Easter chocolate leftover so I just melted a giant chocolate coin and egg in a bain-marie. I’d hazard a guess it was about 170g of chocolate. After dipping or spreading chocolate on the biscuits, I dipped some of them in desiccated coconut, which I poured in another bowl.

Obviously you could use chopped almonds, or dried cranberries, or whatever you want.

The recipe made 30 biscuits and I used three different size cutters – obviously if you use larger cutters, you’ll make less (!)

 

Happy baking! x