Bourbons: A Real Teatime Treat, or with Coffee in the Morning. So 'Chocolaty' and Very, Very Rich.

These traditional British sandwich biscuits (cookies) have been a favourite for many years.  Everyone loves them, just mention the name to any British person you know and see the reaction.  I want to introduce them to the wider world, but not just any Bourbon, this baking recipe is the best and so delicious.  One is never enough, but you will struggle to eat two of these in one go.

I must warn you though before we start, this is not the easiest dough to handle once made.  It crumbles very easily so do not be tempted to add extra flour to aid the rolling out process, you will make the crumbling much worse. I roll it out between two sheets of greaseproof paper or two pieces of plastic wrap; this way I do not have to add any extra flour at all.  Persevere though, a little at a time; the end result is so worth it.

So, lets begin.  Firstly, the biscuit dough.

Preheat your oven to 375F (190C/Gas Mark 5)

Ingredients:

50g  (1/4c/2 ozs) softened butter

50g (1/4c/ 1 3/4 ozs) white sugar

1 tblsp golden syrup (light corn syrup)

110g (3/4c + 2tblsp/ 4 1/4 ozs) plain flour (general purpose flour)

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 heaped tblsp cocoa powder , unsweetened (Do not be tempted to use drinking chocolate or chocolate powder, it is not strong enough; after all, you do want the chocolate flavour to be intense).

Method: 

1.  Cream the softened butter with the white sugar and syrup until light and fluffy.

2.  Sieve together the dry ingredients.

3.  Fold the dry ingredients into the butter/sugar mixture until well combined.

4.  Pin out until the thickness you prefer (Anything from between the width of a coin - 2mm to 6mm, it depends how thick you want your biscuit (cookie) to be.  I prefer two thin biscuits with lots of buttercream filling, it really is up to you).  Do follow the instructions above to make it easier for you to handle this dough.  Only use a little at a time to roll out, keep the rest covered with plastic wrap during rolling. 

5.  Stamp out your preferred shape, I like the daisy cutter so tend to keep it especially for these.  Draw the spare dough back up together and add a little fresh dough to it.  Repeat steps 4 and 5 until all the dough is used up.

6.  Place on a baking sheet lined with baking paper.  They will not stick and do not spread so just leave a little space between them.

7.  Bake until set, between 10 and 12 minutes depending on the thickness of biscuit (cookie).  Be careful though as they are dark biscuits and you cannot go by the colour to judge if baked.  Also, the biscuits will be quite soft when taken out of the oven, they harden as they cool so leave them on the baking tray for a little before transferring them to a cooling wrack.

8.  This will make a lot of biscuit (cookie) halves, so I bag up the spares and freeze them, taking out just enough for use.  Buttercream them frozen, they will soon thaw and you would never know they had been frozen!

The buttercream is as chocolaty as the biscuits, this is the reason they are so good.  It is easy to make and very delicious.  Not too sweet as the cocoa powder is unsweetened and really makes this taste so much of chocolate.

Ingredients:

50g  (1/4c/2 ozs) softened butter

100g  (3/4c/3 1/4 ozs) icing sugar

2 heaped tsp unsweetened cocoa powder (again, not chocolate powder, it must be cocoa).

1 - 2 tblsp of boiling water.

Method:

1.  Put the softened butter into a bowl (either leave the butter out of the fridge for two hours in a warm place, or blitz for 10 second intervals in the microwave, until your finger leaves an indent in the butter - not runny though)!

2.  Sieve into this the icing sugar and cocoa powder.

3.  Using a wooden spoon or an electric hand whisk, start to carefully stir the butter and sugar mixture together.  Once no risk of flying sugar dust, beat it until smooth.  It has to be light and fluffy so the more you beat it the better it will be.  An electric hand whisk makes this so much easier.

4.  Add a tablespoon of boiling water, two if the mixture is a little dry and beat well in.

Now all you have to do is sandwich two of the biscuits together with a great big dollop of chocolate butter cream.  You can pipe it between the biscuits if you want them to look extra special, but it doesn't really matter.  Let the buttercream set up a little before biting into them or you will 'squidge' out all of the yumminess.  I like to halve the biscuit sandwich and eat each half covered with lots of buttercream, uuuuuuum.  Do try it you will be very glad you did, and the difficulty of rolling out the dough passes into the background on eating.  Enjoy!

Until the next time, adios Amigos

From very sunny Almeria Province, Spain. (40C today)!