Grown-up chocolate biscuits

My friend Vanessa has a knack for finding great things - great books, articles, radio docos and most recently - online recipes. One of her latest finds is this chocolate biscuit recipe, which she's adapted. Her version is really good and I may have spent a good part of a day at work looking forward to going home to my chocolate biscuits.

Chocolate and almond biscuits

You'll need:

220 grams butter, softened
70 grams caster sugar
150 grams self-raising flour (I've used plain flour too and it turned out fine)
70 grams almond meal
4 tablespoons cocoa powder
1/2 cup flaked almonds, plus extra for sprinkling

Here's how:

Preheat then oven to 190 celsius and line two baking trays. Cream the butter and the sugar until soft and pale - I use a mixer but you can do it by hand as well. Then sift in the flour and cocoa powder, add the almond meal and mix well. Add your flaked almonds and mix gently until combined. The cookie dough will be moist and sticky.

Using floured hands, roll the dough into balls. I used a tablespoon and made around 18 cookies, you could use half a tablespoon if you wanted smaller cookies. Place the balls onto your trays and press gently. Sprinkle each cookie with extra flaked almonds. Bake for 11 minutes for the medium sized cookies, around 7 minutes for the smaller ones.

Transfer to a cooling rack after the cookies have cooled slightly, around 15 minutes.

And just a tip:

These bikkies are pretty quick to make if you've left your butter out to soften. They'll be a bit crumbly if you eat them warm (the best time to eat them) but they firm up the next day.