Chocolate crackle tops

These chocolate crackle tops are easy chocolate biscuits to make. They suit all ages, can be used for parties, lunch boxes, morning or afternoon tea or with a simple dessert like yoghurt or stewed apples.  This is a recipe perfect for involving the children: mixing, adding ingredients including breaking the eggs, measuring ingredients, forming balls, coating the balls,…

I tried the original version and a version where I removed the cocoa because I was using a strong chocolate and did not see necessary to add the cocoa. Below is the original version and how to apply the variation.

Makes 35-40

Ingredients

• 200 g dark cooking chocolate
• 90 g of butter
• 115 g of caster sugar
• 5 ml of vanilla essence
• 200 g of plain flour
• ½ tsp of baking powder
• Pinch of salt (omit if using salted butter)
• 25 g cocoa powder
• 100 – 150 g of icing sugar for coating (see recipe)Tip:  Using or not cocoa powder. if you use a chocolate with a high level of cocoa, adding the cocoa will make the biscuits too strong in chocolate.  Either use a 50 % cocoa cooking chocolate and the cocoa or if using a 70% chocolate, do not add the cocoa and add one tablespoon of flour (or the dough will be too wet).

Method

 

1. Melt chocolate and butter until smooth
2. Add eggs one at the time, mixing in between each egg
3. Add sugar
4. Stir in vanilla essence
5. Add in at once the flour, baking powder and cocoa powder.
6. Your dough would be quite soft. Place a plastic film on top and place in the fridge for at least an hour (or a day!).  If you have used couverture chocolate, you dough would be fine to use straight away (couverture chocolate crystallise quite quick when cooling down).
7.  Once the dough is hard enough, remove from the fridge.  Heat up the oven to 180 deg C. Use an ice-cream spoon or any strong spoon to form walnut size pieces. Roll in a ball. Place a couple tablespoons of icing sugar in a larger bowl and dust the balls all over.  Remove any excess by shaking it off.
8. Place on a baking sheet covered with a baking paper or buttered. Insert in the oven for no more than 10 minutes (between 7 and 10 minutes). The top should be lightly firm. Transfer to a cooling rack.  You will need two rounds or two baking sheet to bake all the biscuits. Keep well for a week in a box.

Tip: Ensure the icing sugar is fully free of lumps for an even result.