These little beauties are not radically different from my Chunky Chocolate Biscuits that I posted about last July. This, I think, goes to show that whilst some say baking is an exact science, you can play around with the ingredients and still produce something good. The important thing is to get the balance of wet ingredients to dry ingredients right. It also has to be said that biscuits are more forgiving than cake. Take the basic recipe and play around with it. If you don’t have spelt flour, use wholemeal flour, or oatmeal, or plain flour. You can replace the almonds with oats. The texture will be different but the biscuits will still be good.
This time instead of adding chopped chocolate to the biscuit mixture I decided to coat the biscuits with melted chocolate as soon as they were cool and it turns out this is a good plan because every bite is guaranteed to have some chocolate in it – always a bonus.
Some more advice is that if you are on a New Year’s diet (although why would you be?) try not to eat three with your coffee like I just have.
100g (4oz) softened butter
100g (4oz) light brown soft sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
100g (4oz) spelt flour
100g (4oz) ground almonds
25g (1oz) cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
100g (4oz) good quality chocolate, melted
Method
Cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla extract and beat until well combined. Add the spelt, almonds, cocoa and baking powder and fold in until the mixture forms a stiff dough.
Shape dessertspoonfuls into walnut-sized balls and place onto a baking tray. Leave plenty of room for each biscuit to spread. Flatten each biscuit slightly with the tines of a fork.
Bake in a preheated oven at 180°c, gas mark 4 or the middle shelf of the baking oven of the four-oven Aga for 12-15 minutes until firm to the touch. Leave to cool on the trays for five minutes and then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.
Melt the chocolate and spoon on top of each biscuit.
New year’s diet – aghhh what’s that?????
Love the shiny chocolate on top of your biscuits.
Choclette – my thoughts exactly 🙂
That is sound advice.
Tracy – I realised that after the third, doh!
These make my mouth water!
Thank you Michele.
Three is a perfectly fine number for munching on with coffee … diet or not!!! These look very tasty, I’ve got a few recipes stacking up with spelt in them now so maybe its time to push the boat out and give them a try!
Oh Chele you should, spelt is delicious.
Biscuits and Scones abound! the varieties are amazing–just read about Tracy’s Black Pepper-Parmesan, and now your Chocolate-Almond–all delectable. I haven’t tried spelt flour yet—need to do it!
Oh yes Tracy’s scones do sound delicious. I am a spelt flour convert Nancy, do give it a try.
These sound right up my street – and yes I would eat three with a cuppa! The aga baked ham was delicious, by the way. Thanks for the advice. x.
Oh I am so pleased the ham worked well for you. I am glad it’s not just me that eats three biscuits at a time 🙂
I’m just about to roll my sleeves up and tackle this recipe … just one quick question … when the recipe says 100g almonds does this mean ground almonds by any chance?
Silly me! Yes it does Chele, sorry about that. I hope you like them.
Can you substitute the sugar you mentioned in the recipe with Xylitol? If so, what quantity should be used? Thanks.
I am sorry TJ I don’t use ingredients such as xylitol, so I wouldn’t have a clue where to start advising you. Best wishes Kath