Recipe: S-shaped cocoa biscuits

I’m being very laid back with the blog lately, although nothing much has changed in my life: I’m still working as usual, I didn’t go on holidays yet and I’m still baking almost every week.

But it’s summer, and living in a seaside region makes you feel on holiday even if you’re not. So yeah, all this was to justify why I’m posting a bit less on the blog, but I’m as excited as usual about sharing my lovely recipes and photos… especially now that I’ve reached the great milestone of 1.000 likes on Facebook! (You’re not following me yet? Do you have any valid reason? If not, just go on Fb and like my page! Now!).

I know that summer should be all about fresh fruit tarts and light creams, but I had some leftover egg whites and decided to try this recipe for S-shaped cocoa biscuits which are rich in not-so-summery butter.

This recipe by Italian pastry chef Iginio Massari is very interesting because it can be considered a variation of a shortbread tart dough, but in this case the butter is creamed to obtain an airy, flaky dough and the egg whites are used instead of whole eggs or egg yolks.

Finally, the biscuits have to be piped, baked and then dipped in tempered milk chocolate. This was my first successful attempt at tempering chocolate with the seeding method (you find the details in this recipe, but I’m going to write a separate article for a full explanation). For this reason I was ecstatic, until I tasted the biscuits and became even more ecstatic because they are absolutely fantastic!

They had the best texture I have ever found in biscuits, and the crunchy milk chocolate on the outside is just perfect (of course it’s crunchy only if you are able to temper it well)!

I really recommend these biscuits and they are perfect for tea time, although now that it’s 40°C outside, I don’t bother making tea and I just eat them one after the other! 🙂

S-shaped cocoa biscuits with chocolate

Print recipe

Ingredients

250g	Unsalted butter (room temperature)
100g	Powdered sugar
1 pinch	Salt
1/2	Vanilla bean
60g	Egg whites (~2 egg whites, room temperature)
290g	Pastry flour
50g	Cocoa powder
250g	Milk chocolate

Directions

In the bowl of a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the room-temperature butter with the sugar and vanilla seeds at medium speed for around 10 minutes

Sift together twice the flour, the salt and the cocoa powder

Add a third of the flour and cocoa mixture and stir into the creamed butter

Add the egg whites and stir

Finally add the remaining flour and cocoa and stir until you obtain a dense dough

Pipe the dough in the shape of an S on a parchment-lined tray, and repeat until you fill it in staggered rows. To pipe, keep the piping bag vertical over the tray and "draw" an S: to obtain a good-looking shape you don't need to rotate the bag. If the dough is too thick to pipe, warm the bag a bit with your hands.

Bake for 17 minutes at 170°C

Tempering chocolate: melt 170 grams of milk chocolate at 45°C over a bain marie at medium-low heat. Remove from the heat and add the remaining 80g of chocolate, finely chopped. Stir until all chocolate is melted and make sure the temperature drops to 27°C. Finally reheat the chocolate so that it reaches a temperature between 31°C and 32°C. Make sure that the chocolate temperature does not go above 32°C (otherwise simply restart from the beginning) and that the water never enters in contact with the chocolate.

Dip the baked and cooled biscuits in the tempered chocolate. If the chocolate gets too cold and thickens up in the process, simply reheat it without going above 32°C.