Chocolate Chip Pecan Cookies

I feel like I'm living in the midst of a storm at the moment, with excitement, nerves and stress blustering around. I move house and leave Oxford in a few days, and I start my four years soon after. The majority of my kitchen and all of my books are in boxes. I keep reaching for my stress-reducing activities - plums in the fruit bowl, crumble! Oh wait... - without success. It's odd and disjointing.

Thankfully, I stashed some logs of cookie dough in the freezer and kept a baking tray out. I have some Peanut Butter Biscuits (I rolled the dough into a log instead of individual balls), some Chocolate Cardamon Cookies and these chocolate chip pecan cookies. They're crispy and chewy, nutty and sweet and generally comforting.

Wish me luck - I'll be back when I've unpacked my kitchen in Cambridge...



Chocolate Chip Pecan Cookies
(adapted from David Lebovitz's Ready for Dessert)

115g pecans
200g dark chocolate (I use 70%)
115g unsalted butter
150g light brown sugar
75g white caster sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
175g plain flour
1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/4 tsp fine sea salt
1 large egg

Toast the pecans in a dry pan then leave to cool down. Chop the chocolate into small chunks (bigger than normal chips but not huge). Beat the butter, both sugars and vanilla extract together until uniformly smooth (if you're not using a mixer, room temperature butter is easier to combine). Sieve in the flour, bicarbonate and salt then add the egg. Beat together on low until the mixture comes together. Roughly chop the pecans then add them along with the chocolate and mix until combined. Scrape out onto a big square of parchment lined foil, baking parchment or clingfilm (or two sheets if you'd prefer two smaller logs of dough) and arrange into a log. Roll it up and twizzle the ends. Place into the freezer.

After at least an hour or up to a month later, preheat the oven to 170C/340F. Unwrap the end of the log (and if you've used clingfilm, take it all off and place the remaining log into a plastic bag) and cut off however many 1 cm slices you want to bake. Place on a parchment lined tray and bake for 11-13 minutes until the cookies are browning around the edges. Leave to cool on the tray for a few minutes then transfer to a wire rack. Best eaten while they're still warm from the oven.

(Makes about 24 cookies)



Two other biscuit doughs that I've frozen before:
Milk Chocolate and Hazelnut (in a log)
Triple Chocolate Pecan (in spoonfuls on a tray, then transferred to a bag when frozen)

...and one dough I haven't:
Roasted Hazelnut Butter

Chocolate Cardamon Cookies

These cookies are fragrant, rich, delicate and dark.



These cookies are full of cocoa and spiced with lots of freshly ground cardamon.



These cookies are the perfect thing to stash in the freezer for those moments when only a cookie will do.



These cookies have got me drinking milk again, though they're also good with tea.



I can't find any more words today. These cookies are still worth sharing.



Chocolate Cardamon Cookies
(inspired by Signe Johansen's Scandilicious Baking, created with my shortbread recipe)

100g unsalted butter, from the fridge
50g caster sugar
1/2 tsp freshly ground cardamon (approx 10 pods)
90g plain flour
35g cocoa powder
1/4 tsp baking powder
a big pinch of fine sea salt

Blend the butter, sugar and cardamon together in a food processor until you have a paste. Add the flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt and pulse just until you have a dough. Tip the dough onto a big sheet of cling film then roll into a thick, short sausage of about 5cm diameter. Chill in the fridge for an hour until firm.

Preheat the oven to 170C/340F. Line a baking tray with parchment paper. Use a sharp knife to cut as many thin slices of the dough as you want to bake - they should be about 5mm thick. Place on the tray then bake for 7-8 minutes - the middle will have risen slightly. Leave to cool on the tray for 5 minutes then transfer to a wire rack. I bake them as I need them and keep the rest of the dough in the fridge (for a few days) or the freezer (for a few weeks). Eat on the day you bake them - they are at their best when just cooled.

(Makes 15-17 cookies)



Two more posts with cardamon:
Cardamon Orange Pound Cake
Cinnamon-Cardamon Kringel Bread
...and one with vanilla: Whole Vanilla Bean Biscuits

Emiko's Elderflower & Polenta Cookies

I've decided to start a new series of recipe reviews. Each month I'll pick a recipe that has been posted online on a blog, website, newspaper or somewhere else. It might be a recipe that intrigues me, an unusual process, something that I can't imagine the texture or flavour of or just something that I really want to eat. I'll make it, photograph the process, honestly tell you what I think and link to the recipe.

To start, I have a Pinterest board filled with recipes I'd like to try. If there's one you're particularly interested in, like it on the board and I'll take it into account.

I'd also love to hear if you have any new suggestions - if you could leave a note with a link in the comments or send me an email that would be wonderful.



So, for July: Polenta and Elderflower Cookies by Emiko Davies.

This recipe easily covers the 'intrigued', 'unusual process' and 'can't imagine the texture or flavour' categories.

Emiko is one of my favourite bloggers. She lived in Florence for many years before moving to Melbourne with her Italian husband and baby daughter. This recipe comes from Artusi's 1891 cookbook, Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well, a source of many of Emiko's recipes. I always learn something from her posts - without fail, they're both beautiful and intelligent.

Every year, I make my family's elderflower cordial recipe (the photo above is of this year's batch). It's one of my favourite drinks and a ritual I look forward to. Before I read Emiko's post, I didn't know you could cook with dried elderflower - I'd only heard of cordials, syrups, wines and other drinks.



In the comments, we had a chat about how to get dried elderflower - Emiko bought hers as high-quality tea but I was wondering if I could dry my own.

So, when I went out to collect the flowers for my cordial, I picked a few extra to dry (the same rules apply - make sure it's from a secluded spot away from traffic with healthy, creamy-white flowers). I used a needle and thread to string them up by the stem between the handle of my window and a nail in the wall that I hang a lovely Dutch cake tin on (here's another photo). After a few days they seemed to have dried out - in the end, I left them for a week.

Once I'd taken them down, I gently stripped the flowers off the stalks with my fingers. It was a bit of a pain - the dried stalks snap easily and fall into the bowl - but in the end I had heap of flowers in the bottom with a film of pollen coating the china.



The recipe is simple - you cream the butter and sugar, add an egg yolk, then stir in the polenta and elderflower. The dough is then rolled out, cut and baked until golden. The mixture is easy to work with - as it has no gluten, you can reshape and roll without worrying.

The final texture is, for lack of a better word, gritty - but that's surprisingly pleasant, in a crunchy sort of way. I think if I make them again I might use a mix of polenta and flour, to balance out but still maintain the crunch.

I thought they tasted best straight out of the oven. The flavour of the elderflower is distinctive and recognisable from the cordials but slightly dustier and, well, dried. It reminds me of the difference in smell and taste between fresh and dried herbs. I ate one with a cup of Earl Grey and the elderflower really pulled out the bergamot flavour, which I don't normally notice.

In conclusion: a fun experiment, an unusual texture and a new way of using elderflower.



Some notes on the recipe:

- I halved the recipe as I only dried four heads of elderflower. I'm not sure exactly how much the dried elderflower weighed but I had a small handful overall and I used it all. I made eleven cookies from the dough.

- I used precotta instantanea polenta, as that was finer than the bramata, which was the only other type I could find. I had to go to an Italian deli - I couldn't find it in the supermarket except as a ready-cooked slab.

- I used icing sugar and unsalted butter (I was going to add a pinch of salt but forgot). I didn't need to add water.

- My butter was a bit warm as it was a hot day so I chilled my dough for 15 minutes to cool it down before I rolled it out.

- They took 10 minutes to cook.



Three other posts where I've linked to the recipe:
Seed Cake
Chez Panisse Almond Tart
Cumin and Lemon Cookies

(Nearly-)Whatever-You-Want Chocolate Cookies

Spring seems to have finally, finally sprung.

I'm having to adjust to taking pictures with sunlight streaming into my kitchen instead of the beautiful muted light we've had all winter. I went out yesterday without a coat or thick scarf or boots or socks. The woollen throw has been tossed off my bed. The violets are flowering in every nook and cranny of my little garden and the buds on my apple tree are bursting open.

To celebrate, I've made cookies.



About ten years ago, mum bought a simple, magazine-style cookbook from the Australian Women's Weekly series. She spent a year working in Melbourne before I was born and I think she came across the series at that point. We've only ever made one recipe from the book: the chocolate cookies. They've evolved over the years but they're still essentially the same - thick, crispy-on-the-edges, squidgy-middled and wonderfully deep with muscavado and plenty of cocoa powder.

I've made them to say thank you. I've made them for picnics. I've made over a hundred for a catering job. I've made them when friends have come to stay. Mostly, I've made them when I really wanted a chocolate cookie.



Since I first posted about them in 2009 (they were the eighth recipe I posted on here), they've got a little lost in the archives. I wanted to talk about them again, so I thought I'd see what else you could fold through the dough. I usually use pecans with whatever other chocolate I have on hand - usually dark. So I could try a few different things, I split one batch of dough into three: Crystallized Ginger & Dark Chocolate, Double Chocolate & Walnut and Freeze Dried Raspberry & White Chocolate.

I used:
80g dark chocolate
25g crystallized ginger pieces

40g dark chocolate
30g milk chocolate
45g toasted walnuts

100g white chocolate
7g crushed freeze dried raspberries

I haven't tried baking freeze dried raspberries into anything before and sadly it didn't work here - any bits on the outside burned and I wasn't happy with the flavour (so the recipe went from whatever-you-want to nearly-whatever-you-want). Despite that, the ginger variation was great (though I might add a little more ginger next time - I was nervous as this packet seems extremely fiery) and I'm always a massive fan of the nut-chocolate combination.

What combination would you try?



(Nearly-)Whatever-You-Want Chocolate Cookies
(adapted from an Australian Women's Weekly book - I'm not sure which as I can't find the book)

125g unsalted butter
200g soft brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract or paste
185g plain flour
50g cocoa powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp fine sea salt

Mix in:
350g of assorted chocolate, nuts etc

Preheat the oven to 160C/320F. Put the butter into the bowl of a stand mixer and briefly beat to soften it up. Add the sugar, egg and vanilla and beat until smooth. Add the flour, cocoa, bicarbonate, baking powder and salt and mix on the lowest setting to combine. Stir through the mix-ins. Use a couple of teaspoons to create smallish heaps of dough on a lightly greased baking sheet. Place into the oven and bake for 10 minutes (12 if from frozen). Leave to cool on the sheet for 5 minutes then remove to a wire rack.

The dough can be chilled for about 24 hours and frozen for a few months. I freeze formed ready-to-bake cookies on a tray then transfer them to a zippy bag. You can then bake them straight from the freezer whenever you want fresh cookies.

(Makes about 25-27 small cookies)



Three more posts about cookies/biscuits:
2012: Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies
2011: Sesame Wafers
2010: Peanut Butter Biscuits

Whole Vanilla Bean Biscuits

Did you know that you can whizz up an entire vanilla bean and use it in baking?

I first came across the idea in July in a 101 cookbooks recipe for vanilla bean cookies. It had never occurred to me before. Usually I scrape the seeds out and then use the bean itself to infuse ice creams, custards and syrups or to make vanilla sugar. I bookmarked the post and finally got around to making the recipe this week.

The food processor chops the bean up into tiny pieces and releases all the seeds and oils into the sugar. The tiny chunks you get have a similar texture to fragments of raisin. Vanilla often gets overlooked as just another basic ingredient to slosh into everything, so it's lovely to be able to put it in the spotlight. I'm definitely going to experiment to see where else I could use this technique. I've also been trying to work out what you could do if you don't have a food processor. Perhaps chop the bean as small as possible then grind it in a pestle and mortar?

Try to use a high quality, plump vanilla bean - you want it to be soft, as I imagine a tough bean would be difficult to blend and the little bits would be chewier. I did wonder if you could briefly soak a harder bean in some boiling water, like soaking raisins or dried fruit to plump them up, but I haven't tried it.

Though I loved the punchy vanilla, I thought - much to my surprise - that the cookies were too sweet. To me, it seemed that a short, delicate biscuit would be better than a crunchy one. Fork Biscuits, a staple of my childhood, are nearly the texture I was going for, so I compared the ratios of butter : sugar : flour (Heidi = 1 : 1 : 1.08, Fork = 1 : 0.48 : 1.38 ) and came to a new one = 1 : 0.5 : 1.25. Which, I then realised, isn't far off shortbread.

(This slightly ghostly bit of biscuit dough hiding behind parchment is as close to spooky/spidery baking as I'm going to get this year. Happy Halloween!)

The photo above is from the Heidi recipe, where you roll all of the dough out between two pieces of parchment, chill it, then stamp the cookies out afterwards. I decided to adapt this by combining it with the fork biscuit method of making balls and squishing them with (surprise!) a fork: I took some dough, formed a little ball, put it between parchment and then rolled it out into an oval shape. It naturally flutes the edges a little and means that you don't have any dough that you have to re-roll after cutting, so it all stays very tender.

The resulting biscuits are beautifully light and - this is such a cliché, but true in this case - they seem to melt in your mouth.

They might not look as dramatic or exciting as some of my last posts but I am very, very excited about this recipe. My childhood favourite has grown up.

P.S. I'm sorry that this post is a day late and that I've been so useless at replying to comments on the past few posts - I've been ill (lost nearly an entire week to a horrid bout of flu, I was not amused) and between catching up with work and still being pathetically weak and tired I've been struggling to keep everything in the air. Replies will be up soon.



Whole Vanilla Bean Biscuits
(adapted from 101 Cookbooks and my family Fork Biscuit recipe)

1 soft, plump vanilla bean*
50g caster sugar
100g unsalted butter, cold but not rock solid
125g plain flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
a big pinch of fine sea salt
a few pinches of sea salt flakes or fleur de sel (optional)

Cut the hard tips off the vanilla bean then chop it into small chunks. Place in the bowl of a food processor with the caster sugar. Throughout the processing you'll need to stop and scrape the sides and bottom down fairly regularly. Blend until the bean has been broken down into seeds and tiny dark flecks and the sugar has turned light brown (see this photo) - this takes a few minutes. Add the butter and blend, stopping as soon as you have a uniform creamy paste. Tip in the flour, baking powder and pinch of sea salt and pulse until the mixture starts forming bigger clumps and cleans the sides.

Take little balls of the mixture (in between the size of a cherry and a walnut). Don't worry about forming perfect spheres - you don't want to work the dough too much or warm it up. Place the ball on one side of a small rectangle of baking parchment (or two squares, if it's easier). Fold the other side over and use a rolling pin to flatten the ball into an even oval shape about 5-7mm thick. Peel off the parchment and place onto a parchment-lined baking tray. Repeat for the rest of the mixture - I place them in close formation on one sheet as I don't have much space in my fridge, then move after chilling. Chill for 30 minutes.

While they rest, preheat the oven to 170C/340F. Move half of the biscuits onto another baking tray and put back into the fridge. If desired, crush a few sea salt flakes over the biscuits you're baking, then place the tray into the oven. Bake for 8-10 minutes - I turned my trays at 6 to ensure an even bake. The biscuits should have risen slightly then fallen a little and be pale gold with ever-so-slightly darker edges. Cool on the tray for two minutes then transfer to a wire rack. Repeat with the rest of the biscuits chilling in the fridge. They're at their best when they've just cooled down but keep well for a few days in an airtight tin. The unbaked biscuits keep for a day in the fridge and a few weeks in the freezer, separated by parchment.

(Makes 15-17, depending on how much dough you eat *coughIhad15cough*)

Edit 11/01/16: * I recently made these with one of those extra intense ndali vanilla beans and only used half as it was so plump and strong and that was perfect. The mixture was quite pink (got me worried!) but it baked well.

A few related posts:
Gingernuts
Peanut Butter Biscuits
Cumin and Lemon Cookies

Cumin & Lemon Cookies

I have some news.

I’ve been avoiding telling you for a while. I’m not entirely sure why. I guess I’m worried that you will be disappointed.



The truth is that since I finished my finals – even as I was tucking away each folder as my exams progressed – I’ve been missing the topics I studied, missing the medieval world and words.

Though I always enjoyed my course, the bug only truly bit in those last few months as everything started to slot into place, to create a bigger picture. I actually enjoyed revising, happy in the knowledge that I was going to be a pastry chef and nobody would care what grade I got – so I could learn the topics I loved and take risks as I scrawled out essay after essay.

Then my results far exceeded my expectations and opened doors I hadn’t even noticed. And so, even before I started at Cordon Bleu, I started to think about possibly returning to university.

At first I wanted to study part-time (after I had finished at CB), while I set up a business selling wedding cakes. I'd been drawing up careful plans of the business I wanted to create for many months by then, looking at many of the practicalities and dreaming about designs. I had a lot of ideas. A lot of opinions.

Under 'Any plans for the future?' in my college yearbook, I wrote: "My dream at the moment is to set up a bespoke wedding cake business". Now I look back and note that even then I included 'at the moment'. Tellingly, I didn't mention it here.

On our very first day at Cordon Bleu the chef asked what we hoped to do when we left. I stood there in the then-unfamiliar kitchen, a strip of my back chilled by leaning on the frosty marble, surrounded by my new classmates (the infamous Group G), waiting my turn. When it came, I didn't mention anything about wedding cakes. I spoke about this blog and about writing, recipes and photography. Maybe it was the nerves, maybe I knew by then.

So I can comfortably say now that I have put that dream to one side. I would love to make a wedding cake one day - but I don't want to make my living out of it.

As the months ticked by and my wedding cake plans started to crumble, I became more and more serious about studying again. In January I sent in three applications to study full time – I recently received two unconditional offers (I’m waiting on the last result).

So now I know that when the leaves fall and autumn arrives, I will be studying again. I will get to immerse myself back in the bewitching world of medieval languages, culture, history, religion, art and above all, literature. I’m incredibly excited.

This all leads to the final choice I've recently made – this one is only a few weeks old. I have decided to not take the third certificate at Cordon Bleu. I’m therefore leaving at the end of this term (the end of March).

I'm really content with the choices I've made. I hope you will be happy for me too, even though it means stepping away from pastry for the moment. I don’t know where life will lead me, what paths I’ll take, so maybe I will still spend some of my time in a professional kitchen of some kind. I'd like to try it out. I have every intention of continuing to blog - my love of eating, cooking, writing and taking photographs hasn't changed.

I will always be grateful for the support, encouragement and enthusiasm you - my readers and friends - have shown towards me, the course and this blog.

These cookies taste incredibly familiar and unusual all at once. The timeworn sweet flavours of butter, sugar and lemon intermingle with cumin, the second most used spice in the world after black pepper (according to wiki, anyway...). I love the little stripy seeds in savoury dishes - particularly mixed with olive oil and salt then tossed with cauliflower florets and roasted.

When I saw the recipe I knew I had to try it - though I have to admit I was a little skeptical. I'm a convert. They're chewy while warm but crisp when cool - a buttery riot of flavour.

I didn't change anything major in the recipe (by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in the Guardian) and as it's online I decided to not write it out - you can find it at the bottom of this article.

Make sure you cream the butter very well - I did mine for quite a while in the stand mixer. I then cut the flour in by hand to make sure it didn't toughen. I rolled mine into a sausage, chilled it, sliced it and pressed it onto a sheet (leaving the rim you can see) - another time I'll make it longer and thinner as these were a bit big. I think another time I'll also reduce the cumin to 2 teaspoons and put it all in the mix itself, though the seeds do look pretty on top. I only baked half the dough - I've frozen the other half in slices.

Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies

A proper British winter has descended. Grey, damp, and bone-chillingly cold.

If you do want to venture outside for a walk, as I did this Sunday, you'd better take a thermos and a snack. Nothing like a cup of tea to breathe some life into frosty fingers.



The first time I tried to photograph these cookies, they refused to play game. I was just on the edge of giving up and scrapping the post when I realised I should push myself forward instead.

So I baked up a new batch from the freezer, wrapped a few in a piece of cloth, make some tea and ventured out to the park for a picnic.



Living in a big city, I miss the silence. I grew up in the countryside, taking long walks most days through the fields and wild woods, by the rivers and over the bleak moors. The mountains we visited and lived in are quiet, majestic and full of crisp, clean air.

Even though there are green spaces here, they are hemmed by noisy roads and filled with families, cyclists, dog walkers, skate parks, shouting footballers, joggers. Sometimes I want to escape to a space that doesn't bear the touch of humanity.

Besides the silence, it would also be nice as then nobody would be there to look at me like I've gone totally batty because I'm standing on a park bench (/mossy boulder) taking pictures of a cup of tea and some cookies.



I'm on a dried cranberry kick at the moment so I adapted the recipe to include them. The cookies taste of nutty oats rounded off with brown butter, brown sugar, a touch of spice and salt - all offset by the fruity, slightly sharp cranberries. Rustic and satisfying.

The dough freezes beautifully - you can just take however many out want out of the freezer and bake them. Delicious, warm cookies in 15 minutes flat.



Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies
(adapted from Erin C. Weber in Remedy Quarterly Issue 6, who adapted from Deb)

115g unsalted butter
85g plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp fine sea salt
120g light brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla paste/extract
135g porridge/rolled oats
100g dried cranberries

Melt the butter in a wide pan. Keep heating as it foams up. When the foam starts to reside, rusty brown flecks appear and it starts smelling fantastic, scrape all the butter and flecks into a bowl to cool.

In another bowl, whisk the sugar, egg and vanilla together until smooth. Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda, salt and cinnamon together. Once the brown butter is down to body temperature, whisk into the egg mix. Gently stir in the flour mixture until everything is combined. Finally fold in the oats and cranberries. Cover the bowl and put into the fridge to chill. Leave to chill for 1 to 24 hours.

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F. Scoop out tablespoonfuls of dough onto a sheet - if baking immediately, leave a few inches gap. If freezing, place closely together then freeze on the sheet before putting in a bag the next day. Place into the oven and bake for 10-12 minutes from the fridge, 11-13 from the freezer - they should be golden and crisp on the outside. Cool on a rack.

Edited 07/10/15 - I've recently tried this with dried cherries, which worked well.

(Makes about 30)

Maple and Nutmeg Biscuits

I'm going home for Christmas on Sunday. I can't wait to see and ski all the snow that has been falling, to properly start the Christmas baking and to decorate our tree.

We've got mincemeat and mince pies to make, a christmas cake to decorate and stollen to create. This year I'm also thinking of trying out a yule log/bûche de noël - does anybody have a good recipe or tips?



I made up the dough on Monday but waited to bake these until today. In the gap I managed to eat a fair chunk of the chilling packet - the dough is absolutely delicious. I hadn't tried this combination of maple syrup and nutmeg before but it's fantastic - I'm definitely going to try and think of other ways to use it.



I'm not going to write out the recipe as I wasn't happy with the way they baked (they're not the prettiest but they are good to eat - though not as good as the dough!). It may well be because I removed the egg yolk when I halved the original recipe, so you can give it a go from there if you like. I tried to jazz them up with a touch of icing sugar - doesn't it look like glitter in b&w?

Do try the maple-nutmeg-salt combination though, it's absolutely wonderful.

Chocolate Swirls

I love making these biscuits precisely because they are a little fiddly. In a lot of ways it's a very simple recipe - one dough only has flour, sugar and butter blended together and the other only has the addition of cocoa powder. They just take a little time and care. A little love and affection. 

There's something very exciting about cutting each round to reveal the swirl, studded with chocolate. They're so bold and each one is individual, with their patterns of chocolate chunks and different shapes. I like perfection and order in a lot of ways, but these are improved by their individuality.

The dark chunks of slightly bitter chocolate contrast to the sweet biscuit, sticking the crumbs together as you eat. The golden swirl complements the chocolate - I wonder how many you have to eat to work out the perfect ratio to each bite?

I made these for my friends at a sad time. I wanted to make something yummy and comforting. The process gave my hands something to do and filled our flat with a lovely smell. When I don't know what else to do and feel powerless and sad, I cook.

They were my little way of showing of love and affection for each and every person who had one. 

Chocolate Swirls

(Not sure of the origin, family recipe Comes from the Green & Blacks Recipe Book)

For the plain:

150g plain flour

50g caster sugar

125g butter

For the chocolate:

125g plain flour

25g cocoa powder

50g caster sugar

125 butter

Make the plain dough first. Start by sifting the flour and sugar into preferably a food processor but a mixer is fine. Add the butter and blend in until it starts to come together - this will take a few minutes. Form into a ball and then knead lightly. Cover with cling film and place in the fridge. Repeat for the chocolate but sift in the cocoa powder with the flour and sugar. Chill for 30 minutes.

To assemble:

80g dark chocolate (70% if possible)

Preheat the oven to 170 C. Chop the chocolate up fairly roughly - you want a mix of slightly bigger chunks and smaller bits. Start to roll out the plain dough on a big rectangle of baking parchment into a rectangle - it needs to be about 1 cm thick - maybe a little less. Roll out the chocolate in the same way on another bit of parchment, trying to get it into the same shape. Then place the chocolate on top of the plain (with the two doughs meeting in between the two outer layers of parchment. Peel the top parchment off the chocolate layer. Sprinkle the chopped chocolate on, putting the bigger lumps at one end of the rectangle and grading it down to the tiny bits at the other end. Press them in slightly. Using the parchment as support, roll it into a sausage like shape, starting with the big chunks end. When it's rolled into a sausage, cut into 1 cm rounds (you may have to re-roll up some of the end ones or just crimp them in a little as they tend to not be as tightly wound, as you can see above in my roll). Transfer to a greased baking tray and bake for 25 minutes or until golden. Cool on a wire rack. 

Makes about 15.