Mocha biscuits

Ingredients

115 g/4 oz butter

115 g /4 oz light muscovado sugar

85 g/ 3 oz caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tbsp instant coffee granules dissolved in 1 tbsp hot water

1 large egg

115 g/4 oz plain flour

55g/2 oz ground almonds

less than half a teasp baking powder

a quarter teasp bicarbonate of soda

115 g 4 oz plain chocolate broken up into smallish chunks

Method

Preheat oven to 160 degrees C (fan oven)/180 degrees C/350 degrees F/ Gas Mark 4

Grease 2 large baking trays.

Put cubed butter and the sugars in a large bowl and beat until light and fluffy. 

In another bowl put vanilla extract, coffe and egg and whisk. Add this runny coffee mixture to  butter and sugar  mixture and beat all until fluffy. Sift flour, ground almonds, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda into the mixture and lightly fold it in. Follow this with folding in the chocolate chips.

Spoon heaped teaspoons of the mixture onto the baking sheet, spacing the dollops well apart. Bake in preheated oven for 10-15 mintues or until crisp outside but soft within. Let them cool on the baking tray for 2 minutes and then transfer with a palette knife to a wire rack to finish cooling. 

Makes about 24 biscuits.

These were very good and rather different from the very almondy biscuits of previous weeks. The coffee-chocolate mix was very good with a good cup of coffee and they were a lovely colour. The only problem was that we had no dark chocolate and the mixture of milk and Cadbury’s Caramel disappeared into the biscuit to the visual point of invisibility but to the taste point of surpassing loveliness. Next time  – dark chocolate – they will probably look better and have a better texture with obvious chocolate chunks.

Mocha biscuit