White choc & pecan cookies

This is one of the few recipes in The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook that I’ve been happy with. The cookies use a nifty technique where you make the dough, roll it into a sausage, then freeze the sausage for an hour. You then cut rounds and bake ‘em. It gives the finished biscuit a satisfying shapea and semi-regularity.

Anyway, here’s the recipe. It’s very adaptation, for use with other chocolate or nuts of choice. I’ve also increased the amount of chocolate and nuts used.

125g unsalted butter, softened
100g soft brown sugar
50g golden caster sugar
1 egg
1 t vanilla essence
150g plain flour
50g self raising flour
80g white chocolate (or other choc), coarsely chopped
80g pecans (or other nuts), coarsely chopped

Cream and butter and sugars together.
Beat in the egg.
Sift together the flours and add.
Add the chocolate and nuts.
Form the dough into a cyclinder, about 4cm wide (depending on how large you like your cookies).
Leave the cylinder in the freezer to firm up for an hour.

Heat oven to 170C.

Cut the cylinder into slices, about 1.5cm thick.
Bake for around 12 minutes, until starting to brown.
Cool on wire rack.

Oh, and if you’re Italian, I’ve translated it too (with a little help from my similarly sweets obsessed Italian teacher):

Biscotti con gocce di cioccolato e noce

(Da un ricetta originale del ‘The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook’)

125g burro, ammorbidito
100g zucchero bruno di canna (preferibilmente “soft brown sugar”)
50g zucchero finissimo
1 uovo
150g farina 00 di grano tenero (“per tutte le preparazioni”)
50g farina che lievita, 00 di grano tenero
80g (o più!) di cioccolato, tritato grosso
80g (o più!) di noce pecan, o nocciole, tritate grosse

In una ciotola, sbattere insieme il burro e gli zuccheri.
Aggiungere l’uovo, e sbattere.
Setacciare le farine insieme e aggiungere nell’impasto.
Aggiungere i pezzi di cioccolato e di noce.
Fare una forma come un cilindro con la pasta.
Metterla nel congelatore, per circa un’ora.

Preriscaldare il forno a 170°.

Prendere la pasta dal congelatore
Tagliare il cilindro a fette, larghe circa 1.5cm.
Metterle sulla leccarda del forno e infornare per circa 12 minuti, fino a quando diventano dorate.
Farli raffreddare su una griglia per torte.