Quick and easy this recipe for chocolate shortbread works very well indeed.
I do love shortbread and enjoy most baked things that include chocolate. So I decided to make some chocolate shortbread, just as an experiment, based on a shortbread recipe I used recently. All I did was to substitute some of the flour and a little of the semolina, with some cocoa powder and other than that I did the recipe as before. Except that I manually created the dough, using a pastry cutter and my hands instead of a food processor. Of course it would have worked just the same with the food processor and would actually have been quicker, but it certainly didn’t take long by hand.
The recipe is very simple and doesn’t take long to prepare for baking. Then it is a matter of patience as the shortbread bakes and then cools down, having been sliced while still hot to create the wedge shapes.
Mine turned out very well indeed. The rich buttery shortbread with the flavour from the cocoa powder was simply delicious. I was very pleased with it. I don’t think it can ever replace the traditional shortbread but it is a very nice alternative from time to time.
For a wonderful recipe, without chocolate, you could try this shortbread
Easy Chocolate Shortbread
Easy Chocolate Shortbread – Video
Ingredients:
- 140g(1 cup minus 1 tbsp, based on scooping packed flour into a 250ml cup) plain flour
- 75g(6 tbsp) golden caster sugar (caster or granulated is fine too)
- 70g(1.2 cup minus 1/2 tbsp) fine semolina, or ground rice
- 40g(1/3 cup)cocoa powder
- 175g(12 1.2 tbsp) butter, room temperature
- 1 tbsp ice cold water, just in case it is needed to pull the dough together
Method:
- Preheat the oven to 150C/300F.
- Place the flour, sugar and semolina into a large bowl and sift in the cocoa powder.
- Add the butter.
- Either process in a food processor until the mixture clumps or cut the butter into the dry ingredients until there are pea sized pieces of butter left, rubbing between your fingers and then squeezing until it clumps
- Squeeze the mixture into a single ball of dough.
- Press the dough onto the base of an 8 inch/20cm cake tin(preferable with a loose bottom, and lined with parchment paper) using your knuckles until the dough covers the base.
- Using the back of a spoon even the dough all over the top until it is level.
- Prick the dough all over with a fork.
- Using the tines of the fork press down all around the perimeter of the dough making and edge of about 1/2 inch.
- Place the pan into the oven and bake for between 65 and 75 minutes, until the dough is cooked through and begins to change colour.
- Remove from the oven and leave for ten minutes.
- Cut the shortbread into 4 quarters then cut each quarter into three wedges of equal size.
- Allow the shortbread to cool completely before removing from the cake pan and serving, or storing in an airtight container until required.