Feb 02 2010

Chocolate swirl shortbread on the second attempt

Published by Dougal at 9:08 pm under Recipe oot a book!

Last week we were expecting a visit from our ex-neighbours, who have just sold the flat opposite ours and moved elsewhere with a new baby. Right, I thought, we need some nice home-made biccies! I tried making Scrummy Chocolate Swirl Shortbread from Green & Black’s Chocolate Recipes but it failed miserably.

I tried again this week, because I still had many of the ingredients prepped — I had roughly chopped 100g of dark chocolate and cut some greaseproof paper to size and, well, I wasn’t going to be defeated by shortbread. Using Delia’s methods for the shortbread and the original recipe’s method for everything else worked quite well:

Melty middle Rolled up and ready to slice

It’s basically just two colours of shortbread, one made plain and the other using a bit of cocoa instead of part of the flour. You lie one on the other, sprinkle the inside with shards of chocolate and roll it like a swiss roll before slicing.

In future I would try for a tighter coil and smaller chunks of chocolate. In fact, chocolate chip-sized lumps wouldn’t be too small, and would make it easier to roll the dough and cut it too. I would also try to bake them longer. I went over the allotted time but they’re still a wee bit blond and slightly chewy in the middle.

4 Responses to “Chocolate swirl shortbread on the second attempt”

  1. helenon 02 Feb 2010 at 9:12 pm

    I agree regarding the size of choccy bits. Means the chocolate hit is just a little too concentrated in the centre- a degree more distribution would be good.

    My impression is that the sizings given for chopping things in that book are a bit awry. I made the brazil nut chocolate chip cookies and chopped the brazil nuts, to my mind, as the recipe required. I then tried to roll the biscuit mix out to the stipulated thickness. But the nuts were too big! It simply wasn’t possible to roll thin enough with great clods of brazil nut sticking up.

    I almost said something to this effect to you when I saw your chopped chocolate but a)I didn’t want to interfere (and in any case I hadn’t read the recipe) and b)I supposed that this time the recipe might have been right. I was wrong, clearly!

  2. helenon 02 Feb 2010 at 9:13 pm

    Also dougal somewhere forgets to mention that these are nevertheless blimen gorgeous!

  3. Nickyon 06 Feb 2010 at 6:58 pm

    Mmmmmm I love shortbread! I have never tried it with cocoa, but it is never too late!

  4. helenon 07 Feb 2010 at 11:14 pm

    it’s good! although I reckon the chocolate bits through the middle are pretty crucial too :o)

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