My knee hurts today and that is why I’m not going to the gym. It has nothing whatsoever with feeling incredibly lazy and not wanting to change from my Christmasy pyjamas. Nothing what. So. Ever.
When Christmas comes around there are many things I like to eat and one of these is spiced biscuits. Each and every year I go through a frankly disturbing amount of cinnamon, and one of the best places for getting my next fix (aside of course, from mulled wine) is in biscuits.
At this time of year a box of biscuits is never something to be sniffed at, so to celebrate the impending Christmas holidays I thought I would take some biscuits into the office. It also seemed to be a good excuse to have a go at a flavour combination that I’ve been thinking about for a while: chocolate, cinnamon and amaretto.
Conveniently enough, this combination includes the two requirements for this month’s We Should Cocoa (hosted by Choclette at Choclogblog) chocolate and alcohol. I’m very happy to be entering again, because it’s been a few months since I’ve been able to do so. Far too long, in my opinion.
The base recipe for this is a simple chocolate chip cookie recipe by a certain cook who has featured in more media stories lately than even a proper addict has got out that edge of their credit card. Personally, I can’t help but feel sorry for Nigella, the whole thing seems to have transformed from a (suspected) fraud case into near character assassination. Enough to drive anyone to have ‘a life problem’. Well, I for one will not be throwing out my Nigella books any time soon.
On the other hand though, if you want a laugh, I’d suggest you do a little search on YouTube for ‘Higella the Movie’. You’re welcome.
Double Chocolate, Cinnamon & Amaretto Cookies
The base recipe for this cookie recipe come’s from Nigella’s Kitchen. It makes about twenty medium sized cookies. They don’t very last very long in an office.
Ingredients
150g unsalted butter
150g soft brown sugar
75g caster sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
300g plain flour
2 tbsp cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp bicarb soda
120g dark chocolate chips
50ml amaretto
2 eggs
2 tbsp icing sugar
Directions
Preheat the oven to 170ºC .
Mix the flour, sugars, cocoa powder, cinnamon and bicarb soda together in a large bowl, then soften the butter and add it into the bowl along with the eggs, vanilla and amaretto. Mix the whole lot together with a wooden spoon until fully combined.
Stir in the chocolate chips (or get a bar of chocolate and pulverise it with a knife) until they are distributed evenly through the mix.
Line two baking trays with parchment, then use two teaspoons to make little domes of the mixture on the baking trays. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes, or until the edges are a little toasted.
When they come out of the oven, leave them to cool on the trays for five minutes or so, then transfer to a wire rack and dust with icing sugar (at least I think that’s what Nigella dusts them with).
Edinburgh-dwelling, baking and food-obsessed, twenty-something adventure enthusiast. Runs on liberal amounts of coffee, cheese, cake and gin; bribable with same.
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December 29, 2013
Goodness, these sound scrumptious Craig. I’m on a bit of a biscuit renaissance at the moment, so these might be appearing in my kitchen sooner rather than later. Despite you’re love of cinnamon, think you might have forgotten it? Quite intrigued by the flavour combination. So glad you found time to enter WSC this month.
Hope you’ve been enjoying the festivities and best wishes for 2014.
December 29, 2013
Why thank you! I’m really loving biscuits at the moment too, perhaps that’ll have to stop in January if my whole plan for getting fit happens (ha ha ha). Basically, I’m a bit of an idiot and forgot to put it in the recipe. Such a muppet. Thanks for spotting it - it’s in there now. Me too, hopefully my organisational skills might make a reappearance in the New Year so I can enter more often!
I have thanks, and I hope you have/are too!