MM2 - Chocolate Shortbread

Who doesn't like shortbread? Crumbly, buttery and utterly delicious it's a fine treat in its original state. Add chocolate, both cocoa powder and chunks and you'll get something even better!

This recipe is one from a fairly recently acquired book; Easy Baking by Linda Collister. There are so many amazing looking recipes in this book that it's already bristling with post it notes marking the pages of the recipes I want to make. But you have to start somewhere and here seemed as good a place as any. The recipe has also been published online in the Independent (in 1998!!!! years before I started baking with any degree of seriousness!) and is about halfway down the page, here. Ignore the ounce measurements, they've forgotten some vital spaces and / signs!!! I decided to add more chocolate to my version and some semolina for a little added crunch, and I resized it for a smaller tin. My version is given below.

Chocolate shortbread

Ingredients

150g softened butter

75g golden caster sugar

15g cocoa powder

15g fine semolina

195g plain flour

45g dark chocolate (72% cocoa solids is my preference), chopped

Method

- Preheat the oven to gas 4/180C. Grease and base line an 8"/20cm round tin.

- Beat butter in a bowl until very soft and creamy. Add the sugar and beat again until well combined.

- Add cocoa powder, semolina and flour and mix well until no flour remains visible.

- Mix in the chocolate then tip into the tin and press until smooth.

- Bake for 20-25 minutes. Do not allow to brown or it will be bitter.

- Remove from the oven, sprinkle with more caster sugar, mark into 12 and allow to cool completely in the tin.

This was lovely, but I wasn't sure that the middle was cooked properly even though I probably left it in for nearer to 30 minutes. Lovely and buttery and crumbly though, and the added chocolate chunks had a delicious bitter contrast to the main sweet body of the biscuit. One to be repeated but just cooked a little longer I think.