Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 10 minutes
Yield: 20 finished biscuits
I am a big biscuit fan and Bourbons top the chart for me! I would eat half a packet of biscuits for breakfast so I tend not to buy them now that I’m older and the weight piles on faster. So I am really pleased I found this recipe and can make them myself (Just need to perfect the chocolate hobnob and the custard cream now!) The chocolate icing for these is perfect.
As I have mentioned before, my husband doesn’t really have much of a sweet tooth. But he actually helped himself to these chocolate biscuits and went back for seconds.
They were best on the day I made them, but now he is warming them up for 10-20 seconds in the microwave and crumbling them over ice cream.
My only note is that they are pretty hard to roll out. I found the dough pretty dry so I added quite a bit of extra water. In the end it didn’t really seem to make much difference and I didn’t want to add too much so I just rolled it how it was and found it really hard to get thin. So my final biscuit was very thick. In my opinion it needed to be a bit thinner so I will perservere with adding more water when I make them again.
This recipe is Aunt Mary’s from the Primrose Bakery Book.
- 225g unsalted butter at room temperature
- 225g golden caster sugar
- 4 heaped tsp golden syrup (I have a feeling I added 4 tbsp!)
- 340g self raising flour
- 115g cornflour
- 115g cocoa powder
- 4 tbsp water, or more if needed
Method:
Making the biscuits –
- Cream the butter, sugar and golden syrup together in a bowl, using an electric mixer
- Sift the flour, cornflour and cocoa powder together and beat into the creamed mixture, along with the water
- If the mixture seems very dry, add a little more water
- Knead thoroughly to form a smooth thick dough
- You can either rest the dough in the fridge until you are ready to finish making the biscuits, or roll it out straight away
Baking the biscuits –
- Preheat the oven to 180C and line a baking tray with parchment paper
- Lightly flour your work surface and roll out the dough (aim for a thickness of 3-4mm)
- Using a cookie cutter cut out your biscuits in pairs
- Lay each biscuit on the tray, leaving a little space between
- Bake in the oven for 10-12 minutes until hard to the touch. Make sure you don’t overcook them or they will burn (they will firm up when cooling)
- Allow to cool
- 2 tbsp cocoa powder
- 4 tsp warm water
- 115g unsalted butter at room temperature
- 6 tbsp icing sugar
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract (Optional)
Method:
- Sift the cocoa powder into a bowl, add the warm water and stir together
- In a separate bowl, beat the butter until smooth using an electric mixer
- Add the icing sugar and vanilla extract (if using) and beat well
- Add the cocoa powder and water
- Sandwich 2 biscuits together
I piped the chocolate icing in the middle – it just made it easier to make it neat.
Obviously you can make them any shape and size you want. Mine were giant sized because I love Bourbon biscuits! And I got the Home made cookie stamp from Hobbycraft (but you can get it online)
Definitely need more than 4tsp of water and a lot of elbow crease to get the dough to come together, but tastes great when done. Although next time will make them a lot smaller as not one of my kids was able to finish a biscuit. Quite rich but lovely!
I really liked these. I used plain flour instead of self raising to make sure that the cookies didn’t spread or lose their shape. It didn’t seem like this was a problem and they held their shape very well. I also used 4 tablespoons of golden syrup (not teaspoons, which was eluded to in the recipe). I omitted the icing stuff because my kids got all creative and started making faces and 3D shapes with the dough instead of stamping it all. They’re so yum. A bit like diving into 70% dark chocolate, instead of the super-sweet milk chocolate biscuits you usually get. Great recipe. Thanks!