I am absolutely loving the new job! 5 weeks in and it’s brilliant – I’m like a new person and have been loving the extra time I have for things like cooking and baking! One of my new colleagues is the team baker and we’ve had many a chat already about baking, recipes and tips. She lent me one of her books as she’s in the middle of moving house, and is about to have her first baby so doesn’t have the time to spend on baking at the minute!
It’s a brilliant book – called Saved by Cake by Marian Keyes. Some of you may recognise her name from some of the fiction books she’s written but in recent troubled times she turned to baking for comfort, and ended up writing a recipe book. I won’t spoil it for you too much because I’d wholeheartedly recommend getting it yourself, but it has some fantastic recipes in, from standards like a victoria sandwich to the weird and wonderful…white chocolate and wasabi cupcakes with salted caramel icing anyone?!
Anyway, I tried the chocolate and treacle biscuit recipe for which you need:
- 150g dark chocolate
- 100g butter
- 150g light muscovado sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 tbsp black treacle
- 110g plain flour
- 30g cocoa powder
- pinch of salt
These need about 12-15 minutes in an oven set at 180 degrees, though keep a careful eye on them as they are prone to burning. The only other thing to say is that they have to cool almost entirely on the tray (lined with baking paper) before you transfer them to a wire rack.
The verdict? Really yummy! The treacle flavour is definitely there and adds a real depth to these biscuits without being overpowering. They have a lovely texture and work fantastically well with a cup of tea!!
Not being a U.K. gal, I don’t own treacle, but it’s molasses, right? Or is there a difference? Beautiful cookies. I can almost taste them!
I think they are very similar, if not the same thing! They were brilliant biscuits – I’d recommend making them but I have to warn you it’s hard to stop at eating just one or two!!
These look wonderful but I’ve never seen black treacle in Australia. Wonder if golden syrup would suffice?
Golden syrup is a bit different – much lighter in colour and much sweeter. Treacle is black and quite bitter more like molasses….this may help. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treacle
They would taste nice with golden syrup – just a bit different!!