Hazelnut Shortbread with a gooey chocolate topping and a crunchy hazelnut topping, need i say more?
Perfect with a cuppa or a coffee.
Ingredients
Hazelnut shortbread
200g hazelnuts
75g caster sugar
120g plain flour
120g cold unsalted butter, cubed
Chocolate ganache (ish) topping
100g bar of dark chocolate
Teaspoon of unsalted butter, about 25g or so
Some of the roasted hazelnuts from the 200g
Directions
Spread the hazelnuts out on a baking tray and bake for about 8/10 minutes in a preheated oven at 160’c. Keep an eye on them because nuts burn so fast! When they are lovely and toasted remove from the oven and let them cool. When the bits have cooled rub them between your fingers and that will remove most of the dark skins. Don’t stress yourself too much about getting every bit of skin off, a little bit left really doesn’t matter. You’ll need to save a few of the nuts for the topping. About 15 or a small handful.
Tip the skinned hazelnuts into a food processor and blitz until they are in a fine powder. (If you don’t have a good processor tip them into a zip lock plastic back, suck the air out and bash with a rolling pin until you have a fine powder, pop a teatowel under the bag to protect your work surface) when you’ve done this add the flour and sugar then blitz again to combine. When you’ve combined those add the cubed butter and blitz again to make the dough. The dough will be soft but don’t worry.
Tip the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and roll into 2 sausages, they should be 5cm thick. Wrap the sausages in clingfilm or baking paper and refrigerate for about 30 mins to let the dough firm up. If freezing for another time, freeze now.
When the dough has firmed up slice into biscuits, you should get about 10 from each sausage. Place on a lined baking tray, evenly space them out because they will spread a little. Bake for about 12/13 minutes in a pre heated oven at 160’c. Don’t let them go golden! These babies need to stay beige! Remove from the oven and let them cool for a few minutes on the tray then transfer the shortbread to a wired cooking rack. Let them cool completely before topping with melted chocolate and the nuts.
Break up the chocolate into chunks and pop in a glass heatproof bowl. Place the bowl carefully over a pan of simmering water (make sure the bowl doesn’t actually touch the water) and melt the chocolate. Meanwhile blitz the reserved hazelnuts into a crumb in a food processor.
When the chocolate has melted add the butter and stir together so it’s thick and ganache like. Spoon a teaspoon of the ganache-ish chocolate onto each biscuit and sprinkle the hazelnut crumb over the chocolate. Leave the chocolate to set a bit then dunk away.
