This is such an easy and delicious recipe. One for the kids, or keep them all for yourself. The dark chocolate dip adds some luxury to these, but they work just brilliantly without.
125g butter 50g caster sugar zest of one orange 180g plain flour
Pre-heat the oven to 180C (or 170C if fan-assisted). Cream the butter and caster sugar together. Add the zest and stir through. Then mix in the flour to make a dough. Roll the dough out to approx 1cm deep and cut into fingers or rounds. Place on a baking tray (lined with baking paper) and bake for 10-15 mins (this will vary depending on your oven and the size you cut them to. You can check them after 8-10 mins to see how they are doing). Once they are just starting to turn golden the edges they are ready.
Allow to cool and they are delicious if you eat them as they are or…
Melt 100g plain chocolate in a heat proof bowl placed over a pan of simmering water. Make sure the bottom of the owl isn’t touching the simmering water. Once the chocolate has melted, remove the pan and tip it slightly so you can dip the cooled shortbreads in. Place on clean baking paper to set.
Although making biscuits is what we do every day, we still love spending a bit of family time making them too. It can be as complicated or simple as you can face, and this weekend we decided to try ‘simple, yet impressive” for our family Valentine’s baking extravaganza!
So these are very straight-forward, require no cooking (but there is chocolate melting so you will need to supervise this part) and you can be as creative as you like.
Ingredients for our pink biscuit treats…
We bought:-
pink wafer biscuits
white chocolate
red candy melts (you can buy these from lots of places including Hobbycraft, Lakeland, cake decorating shops and online)
sprinkles and sugar decorations (we used some supermarket sprinkles and dried raspberry pieces from Waitrose, but if you are going full Valentines, you could order heart sprinkles like these from the amazing Shire Bakery
and you will need:-
greaseproof paper
a small saucepan
a glass bowl(s)
a sharp knife
1) Melt your white chocolate. The trick is to melt it slowly in a glass/heatproof bowl over some gently simmering water. (For the cookery buff’s, this is called a Bain Marie). Make sure that your water is simmering gently, that the bottom of the bowl is not touching the water and that no water gets into the bowl with the chocolate. You need the steam to gently melt the chocolate until it is lovely, smooth and all melted.
2) Take your bowl off the heat and put it onto a folded tea towel to give it some stability. Place your greaseproof paper onto a chopping board, or plate so you have somewhere to place your wafers once they are dipped, and then melt a handful of candy melts (either using the same Bain Marie method and a clean bowl, or very gently in the microwave – there are instructions on the packet.)
3) Take one wafer at a time and dip half of it into the melted white chocolate. You might need to use a teaspoon to help the chocolate cover some of the sides of the wafer. Once you are happy with the coating of chocolate, place the wafer onto the greaseproof paper.
4) Use a teaspoon to drizzle the melted candy melts over the white chocolate-coated parts off the wafer biscuits. If you hold the teaspoon above the dipped wafers and gently shake it back and forth, you should get a bit of drizzle across each one. Remember, this is about having fun, not creating a perfect drizzle!
5) Sprinkle your chosen toppings – dried raspberry, hundreds and thousands or heart sprinkles…..and again, perfection is not required here, but fun is!
6) Leave somewhere cool to harden/set, and then store in an airtight jar, or package into cellophane bags with pretty ribbons ready to present to your Valentine!
7) Enjoy and please tag us @enchantingbakes to show us how you got on!
