Jaim's Chilli Chocolate Cookies

This recipe technically goes against my original purpose for this blog.  The idea was for me to use make better use of my cookbooks and to encourage my family to be more adventurous in their eating.  Along the way, I've used it as an excuse to work on my baking skills by churning out a fair few cakes and bakes and this recipe falls fairly and squarely into the category of what I'd call 'off-piste cooking' if I had my management-speak head turned on.

Since discovering Twitter, I've started following many fellow foodies and reading their blogs.  Consequently I think about food all the time, seem to always be hungry and eat far more naughty stuff than I ever used to.  This is why I am going to struggle to seriously lose weight before this challenge is over.  I have zero willpower.

Last week, I was seduced by these stunning looking biscuits from the lovely Jaim of Jaim's Kitchen.  I love Jaim's recipes - they're always so detailed in how she decided on the recipe and great advice on how to make the recipe succeed first time.  If more cookbook writers followed this format, there'd be an awful lot less dusty, unused cookbooks sitting on people's shelves.

Glittery cookies

Her photography is also stunning.  I'm not normally seduced by girly, sparkly things but I just loved the pretty red glitter sprinkled on these cookies.  And I just happened to have some in my baking cupboard that was left over from Miss A's Christmas biscuits.  It was a sign.  I quite clearly had to make these biscuits because it would be wasteful to not use up the red glitter, wouldn't it?

Not that we ever have visitors to our house, but I do like the idea of having something you can whip out of the freezer at a moment's notice for a gift.  The recipe is generous enough to make some for now and put the rest of the dough in the freezer for a later date.  I am going home for the weekend so it will be nice to bake some early on Friday morning to bestow on my grandfather - although I may just dip those in plain chocolate.

The one bit I struggled with - and this is purely something I have to learn and practise at - was the dipping of the biscuits into the chocolate.  I didn't particularly give much thought to how deep the chocolate may or may not be in the ramekin that I melted it in.  Because I only had half the number of biscuits, I melted half the amount of chocolate.  But when I tried to dunk them in, it was probably only about a centimetre deep.  Cue a lot of faffing around and wiggling of part-dipped biscuits to try to get it to run further down.  I just about got there in the end, but mine aren't as beautifully neat as Jaims - you have to check out her stunning photography.

As for the taste test?  I adore the texture of these biscuits.  I was expecting them to be like shortbread, but they had a slightly chewier texture.  It's hard to describe but they were crumbly at the edges and had a really lovely bite in the middle.  I really love the dough and will use it time and again with other flavours.  I only used the coffee essence in the dough that I baked today so I'm thinking of maybe trying to make lemon sherbert to use with either dark or white chocolate on the next batch.  And the dough would definitely work with shards of ginger in it.

The chilli chocolate is a lovely touch.  At first I was worried that I'd maybe not used enough, but it gave the biscuits a lovely warm aftertaste without setting your mouth on fire.  I think even my mother - who hates anything spicy - would like these.

Definitely a keeper and good luck to Jaim with this entry into Bettie's Cookie Wars.  Thank you so much for sharing.  You can find the recipe here.