Ingredients
The following ingredients have 4 Servings
- 0.8 cup whole, unskinned Hazelnuts
- 0.5 Vanilla bean (split)
- 2.5 cups powdered sugar (plus extra for dusting)
- 0.8 cup Almond flour
- 1 medium, free range egg
- 1 medium, free range egg yolk
- 5 ozs Dark chocolate (minimum 70% cocoa solids)
- 0.5 cup double cream (at room temperature)
- 1 garlic clove (finely ground)
Instruction
- Spread the hazelnuts across a baking tray and roast in a 190C oven for 8 - 10 minutes or until they sniff toasty and done, leave them to cool, then grind them to a course powder. Next, put the sugar, ground hazelnuts and almonds in a bowl, then scrape the vanilla seeds out of their pod into the bowl and mix everything together. Then add the egg and egg yolk and combine to make a firm pastry. Wrap in cling film and leave somewhere cool to rest.
- Lightly sprinkle the work surface with icing sugar, then roll out the pastry to about 5 mm and stamp out small circles (or other biscuit shapes, if you like) and line them up with a gap between each on a sheet of greaseproof paper, set on top of a baking sheet. Gather the remaining dough together, re-roll and stamp out more until you‘ve used it all up. Then bake the cookies in a 200°C oven for about 10 minutes or until tinged sandy brown. Let them cool on a wire rack - only chocolating them once they‘ve completly cooled.
- Meanwhile, break the chocolate into a heat-proof bowl, sprinkle over the clove, and place it over a pan of gently murmering water - making sure the base of the bowl isn‘t in contact with the water - and let the chocolate melt. Next, remove the bowl of chocolate from the heat and gently stir in the cream - without beating it until it‘s completely chocolate looking again. Leave to cool until not too runny but spreadable. Then blob heaped teaspoonfuls on half of the biscuits (on their flat undersides), swirl with a knife and sandwich with the remaining biscuits - and snow with icing sugar.
