Choc dipped ginger biscuits

 

Ok, so clearly I had a baking frenzy yesterday. Cake just wasn't enough so I made these chocolate ginger biscuits as well, adapted from Best Recipes. And I swear to you, THEY ARE THE MOST DELICIOUS BISCUITS EVER. For serious. This is a hyperbole free zone. Shut up, it is. Ginger: delicious. Chocolate: even more delicious. Put them together and holy wow!

Ingredients

•  2 cups flour
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon bicarb soda
• 1 tablespoon ground ginger
• generous shake of cinnamon
• another of nutmeg
• 125g or 4 oz butter
• 1 egg
• 3 tablespoons golden syrup
• lots of finely chopped crystallised ginger
• Chocolate of your preference

And here's how you do it. It's super easy. Put all the dry ingredients in a mixer with the cubed butter. Blend until it resembles large crumbs. Stir through the crystallised ginger. Mix the egg through the golden syrup and add to the flour mix. Stir wet and dry mixes together vigorously with a large spoon (there may still be crumbly chunky bits at this stage). Tip out onto a clean surface and press together with your hands into a doughy ball. Knead for a minute until pliable.

Then spoon the mix into walnut sized balls on baking paper lined trays, and squish them gently with your fingers to flatten them a bit.

Bake them at 160 C for 15 minutes (a bit longer if your oven isn't fan forced) so that they look like this:

While these delectable morsels are cooling, get yourself some chocolate in a microwave-proof bowl.  When melting and cooking with chocolate, you will really notice the difference between good and poor quality chocolate so get your hands on some callebaut if you know what's good for you. I used two thirds dark and one third milk.

Then microwave it until it is glossy and delightful and smooth. They key to melting chocolate in the microwave without it burning is to underdo it. Put it in for 20 seconds at a time and keep checking it. Once it's mostly melted and softened, stir it really fast, the remaining lumps will melt in the ambient heat.

Lay a sheet of clean baking paper on your bench, and have your biscuits in easy reach. Then dip half of each biscuit in the chocolate and lay on the baking paper.

Then stare at them lovingly and try not to drool.