Niki Louca from My Greek Kitchen shares her favourite recipe for Chocolate Hazelnut Shortbreads with The Greek Herald. You can follow her on Instagram @mygreekkitchen for more!
Ingredients:
- 250g unsalted butter at room temperature
- 120g pure icing sugar – sifted
- 120g hazelnut meal
- 230g plain flour
- Couverture dark chocolate to dip biscuits in
Method:
- Using an electric mixer, place the butter and sugar beating them together till pale and creamy – about 5 minutes.
- Add hazelnut meat and flour and gently fold through with the butter/sugar mixture.
- The dough will be a little sticky but that’s perfectly fine. Take a large piece of glad wrap and put the dough on it. Roll it into a log, approximately 4cm thick, and tightly wrap it. Refrigerate for approx. an hour so the butter hardens, which will make it easier to cut. You can alternatively put the mixture into a piping bag and pipe out the biscuits – if you decide to do this, do not refrigerate dough. Pipe straight away onto baking trays and cook.
- Preheat your oven to 180C fan force. When the hour or so has passed, remove log from fridge, unwrap from glad wrap and using a sharp knife cut into 1cm thickness discs. Place them on baking trays with baking paper and bake for 12-15 minutes. Remove from oven as soon as you see a little colour on the edges of the biscuits. Allow to cool in tray.
- In the meantime, melt some dark chocolate over a pot of simmering water. Place chocolate in a glass bowl and put bowl over a saucepan with some water. Make sure the glass bowl does not touch the hot water as it will burn the chocolate. Once most of the chocolate is melted, remove from heat and stir it till the remainder chocolate fully melts.
- Take the cooled biscuits and dip them into the chocolate on one side (I usually cover half a biscuit). It’s entirely up to you how much you cover it with chocolate. Place biscuit back on the baking paper till chocolate has hardened and store in an air tight container.
Niki Louca runs cooking classes in Melbourne. For more or to book classes visit My Greek Kitchen at www.mygreekkitchen.com.au or Instagram @mygreekkitchen. You can email Niki at: niki@mygreekkitchen.com.au.
