White chocolate dipped hazelnut and apricot biscuits
This recipe will give you about 80 biscuits of the diameter of a champagne flute. I didn’t mean to make so many but I had begun to cream the flour and sugar before the 450 g of flour made be blink and look at the recipe again. By then it was too late and I was committed. Flagging, having cut out 40 biscuits, I bagged the rest of the dough and froze it. But the biscuits are very good and one day I shall be glad to have something so delicious tucked away and ready for baking with no further preparation. The apricots make them gently chewy, while the chopped hazelnuts hint at central European delicacies like Linzer torte and kipferl.
White chocolate dipped hazelnut and apricot biscuits
225 g golden caster sugar
225 g unsalted butter
1 egg
2 teasp vanilla extract
400g SR flour
50 g wholemeal flour
150 g roughly chopped dried apricots
150 g chopped hazelnuts
200 g white chocolate & 50g chopped hazelnuts (after cooking)
White chocolate dipped hazelnut and apricot biscuits
Preheat the oven to 160 º C/ Gas Mark 3
Line 2 baking trays with grease proof paper (you will need to re-use these trays at least 2 more times for this large amount of mixture – and that’s even if you do what I did and bag half in the freezer for another time)
Beat the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add the egg and mix well. Add the vanilla extract. Sift the flour and beat until combined. Add the nuts and apricots and mix well to distribute these as evenly as possible.
Turn the dough on to a floured board and knead briefly until smooth (I found this easier to do with a quarter of the dough at a time). Roll out to about 5mm thick and cut out rounds (I used the end of a champagne flute so the biscuits weren’t too big). Place these on baking trays and put them into the oven for about 10 minutes until the edges begin to turn golden. Leave to cool on a wire rack. Repeat with remaining dough.
To decorate, melt the chocolate in a bowl over a saucepan of scarcely simmering water. When the chocolate is melted, remove pan from the heat. Dip each cookie half way into the chocolate and sprinkle chopped nuts over the wet chocolate, Return to wire rack. Leave to set fully (I leave mine on the wire tray in a cupboard overnight as obviously you can’t cover the biscuits with a tea towel at this stage). Will keep in an air tight container for a couple of weeks (ours never last that long).
Those on the green plate lack the sprinkled nuts but are otherwise identical.
I based this recipe on a Homes and Gardens recipe of January 2014, replacing pistachios with hazelnuts and including some wholemeal flour.
8 Comments
Goodness, if only my freezer had space for rolls of biscuit-dough…!
And I have been trying to empty the freezer to give it a much needed defrost…
Another great recipe, thank you. My colleagues will be grateful when term begins!
Lucky colleagues – these are just what you need with that mid morning coffee or afternoon tea. What a charitable soul you are Jane.
Oh dear, not really charitable at all. I work with an office full of IT blokes who now give me a priority service; two screens for my data, new keyboard, etc etc; but I do really enjoy their company and it’s great having people to bake for now that all the children have left home.
Oh yes, Jane, I do understand – it’s very, very important to keep anyone au fait with IT on side. If baking is effective, keep up with it.
These look particularly delicious Mary. I can imagine your dismay when you realised how many biscuits you needed to cut out but very handy to have biscuit dough in the freezer for another time x
I’ve already mentally made use of this cache of biscuit dough for at least 3 occasions!