Thursday 14 January 2016

Basic Biscuit Dough

I don't really make biscuits that often...partly as once I have made them, they tend to vanish pretty quickly, as I'm the sort of person who can eat an entire back in a few minutes!

I was a bit short on time last night, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to practice...I dug up a simple dough recipe and whipped up a batch, with the plan to use up some of the chocolate and cream I had lying around to make a ganache filling. I probably made a few mistakes along the way...I didn't rest the dough enough, and like a muppet didn't flour the surface (or, if I'd been more sensible, I'd have used my silicone mat), so the cut biscuits were a challenge to get off the surface, meaning some were not quite round. Finally, I'm not great at rolling even depth, so the thicknesses are a little random. The dough was very soft...this might have been as I used margarine, rather than butter.

I used a small star shape cutter on half of them, to get a hole, and then filled them with a 50/50 chocolate/cream ganache. The end results are very edible, but I'd like to make some improvements;
  • A slightly softer biscuit (possibly just making them a bit thicker)
  • Better flavour in the biscuit
  • Better shape and presentation 

Chocolate Star Biscuits

 Biscuit Dough

  • 100g butter (softened)
  • 100g caster sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 250g flour
  • ½tsp of vanilla extract
  • ½tsp baking powder
  • ½tsp salt

1) Cream the butter and sugar together until light, soft and fluffy

2) Beat the egg into the butter mixture

3) Sift and mix in the flour, baking powder and salt until a soft dough is formed.

4) Form the dough into a ball, wrap in clingfilm, and chill for an hour in the fridge

5) Pre-heat oven to 150'C

6) Once the dough is chilled, roll out on a floured surface to ~½cm thickness

7) Using a 2" circular cutter, cut out ~36 biscuits (re-roll the left overs to get more biscuits)

8) Place the biscuits carefully on a non-stick baking tray (I needed 3 trays, with 12 on each)

9) Using a small star cutter, make a shaped hole in half the biscuits

10) Bake each tray for ~12 minutes, keeping an eye on them to make sure they do not burn

11) remove from oven, and cool on wire racks

Ganache Recipe

  • 100g dark chocolate, broken into pieces
  • 100g double cream

1) Place the  chocolate and cream in a heatproof bowl, and place on a bain-marie (I used alarge saucepan full of water, with a colander on top), and heat while stirring.

2) Once the chocolate has melted, and the mixture has turned a glossy brown, remove from the heat and allow to cool.

3) Put the ganache into a small piping bag

Building the Biscuits

1) Once cool, turn the biscuits without star holes upside down on the rack

2) Pipe a small circle of ganache onto the upside down biscuits

3) Gently press a biscuit with a star-hole onto each ganache circle, taking care not to over-press

4) Leave for a couple of hours for the ganache to set

5) Eat!