Preparation time: 10 – 20 minutes
Cooking time: 2 hours
Skill level: easy
Makes: 30
Recipe: Dan Lepard

Ingredients

• dark chocolate – 200g
• the whites from 4 medium eggs
• caster sugar – 175g
• honey – 50g
• icing sugar – sifted – 100g
• flaked almonds (optional)

Start by pre-heating the oven to 140C/gas mark 1 and cover a baking tray with nonstick baking paper.

Melt the chocolate in a bain-marie and set to one side.

Put the egg whites in a large bowl and beat until stiff.

Add the sugar a third at a time and whisk on a high speed until smooth, glossy and very thick – the meringue mix should hold its shape.

Beat in the honey until just combined and then gently fold in the icing sugar.

Next gently fold in the chocolate without fully amalgamating it so you keep some streakiness.

Place small spoonfuls on the prepared tray (the meringues will go flat if too big)

Scatter with almonds (optional) and bake for about two hours.

Verdict: We served with a Greek yoghurt which was a nice sour note to offset the sweetness, very tasty and high fives all round (there was an American in the room).

Drink: A chilled dry red which went very well with the chocolate, again the dryness was a fine sweetness offsetter.

Entertainment: Endless gazing at our respective infants, ours naturally being the most perfect, beautiful, etc.

Preparation time: 15 minutes plus chilling time
Cooking time: 10 minutes
Skill level: so easy a child could do it
Makes: 30ish
Recipe: Jme

Ingredients

• butter – 140g
• caster sugar – 140g
• 2 egg yolks
• self-raising flour – 255g
• cocoa powder – 30g
• 30 squares of good quality chocolate (milk, white or plain)

Hi guys, for this recipe you’ll need two circular pastry cutters about 4cm and 5cm in diameter (or a pair of compasses, knife and steady hand)

Grease a large baking sheet.

Cream the butter and sugar together until creamed.

Beat in the egg yolks and then add the flour and cocoa powder to make a dough.

Turn out and knead and then put it into the fridge for a while to chill.

Preheat the oven to 190ºC/gas 5.

On a lightly floured surface, roll out about a third of the dough until thin, then cut out about 30 circles with the smaller cutter.

Spread them out on the baking sheet and put a square of chocolate in the middle of each one.

Then roll out the rest of the dough and cut out an equal number of circles with the larger cutter.

Lay over the top of the chocolate and press gently around the edge to seal and form your biscuit.

Cook in the preheated oven for 10 minutes

Eat them hot or cold.

Verdict: We filled ours with and an 85% cocoa plain chocolate, so the end result was a light crisp sweet biscuit with a dark moody sophisticated heart. Yum.

Drink: Best with a nice cup of tea.

Entertainment: Pretending that an eight-week old child had assisted in the preparation of the biscuits by sitting her in the kitchen and talking her through the process – Yumblog Junior will have to learn sometime and I’m sure she’ll have some residual memory of the food preparation we’ve been talking her through.

In our defence, this was our first attempt at such butter-rich chocolate-filled biscuits, so perhaps these errant little dainties were fashioned more by enthusiasm then precision. Don’t be fooled by appearances though, whatever shape they end up, these are guaranteed to be delicious.

Preparation time: 30 minutes
Cooking time: 8 minutes
Skill level: pretty easy
Makes: 16

Ingredients

For the biscuits

• icing sugar – 100g
• softened butter – 100g
• vanilla extract – 1 tsp
• 2 large egg whites
• plain flour – 120g

For the ganache

• 70% cocoa plain chocolate – 90g
• double cream – 3 tbsp
• icing sugar – 1 tbsp

Start by preheating your oven to 200C (gas mark 6) and lining a baking sheet with non-stick paper.

Beat together the sugar, butter and vanilla until fluffy.

Next beat in the egg whites and then fold in the flour.

Spoon the mixture into a piping bag with a 1cm nozzle

Pipe the mixture on to the sheet, in 32 x 5cm fingers.

Bake for 6–8 minutes, until the edges are brown.

Leave to cool

For the ganache, break the chocolate into pieces and put it in a heat-proof bowl with the cream. Place the bowl over a pan of very hot water.

When the chocolate is half-melted, take the bowl off the pan.

Stir the chocolate until it has entirely melted and then beat the mixture as it cools.

Spread 1 tsp of ganache on a biscuit.

Place another biscuit on top, pressing down gently.

Repeat with the rest of the biscuits.

Leave in the fridge for an hour to set, then dust lightly with the icing sugar before serving.

Verdict: Velvety chocolate sandwiched between two butter-rich biscuits. Delicate and delish.

Drink: These go equally well with either a hearty red or a nice cup of tea.

Entertainment: The beautiful and touching ‘Let the Right One In‘ on DVD.

Preparation time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 10 minutes
Skill level: easy

Ingredients

• butter – 100 g
• plain flour – 175 g
• brown sugar – 75 g
• plain chocolate – 100 g – chopped
• cocoa powder – 75 g
• bicarbonate of soda – 1/2 tsp
• salt – pinch
• castor sugar – 75 g
• vanilla essence – few drops

Sift flour into a bowl. Add butter and cream the mixture. Add sugar. Add cocoa powder. Add chopped up bits of chocolate.

Taste some of the mixture and wonder if you really need to cook it. Form into little balls and place on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Dip a fork in hot water and make fork indentations on each biscuit – you can temper the biscuity/cakeyness at this stage – the flatter the biscuitier.

Bake at 190 C/gas mark 5 for ten minutes.

Set aside on grid to cool.

Eat.

Just the one.

Well another won’t hurt, etc…

Verdict: The people liked the chocolate biscuits, that’s a FACT.

Drink: A drop of red/some beer/some rose/some Cava/watered down juice for the littluns and tea for John’s Mum.

Entertainment: Small boy child having his birthday presents opened by slightly older girl child. Then another small child driving a child’s car thing back and forth at levels of repetition only tolerated by small children.