A big THANK YOU to everyone who came to my book launch on Saturday. It was lovely to see so many people. I am a little slow-witted at times, so it was only part way through that I remembered I’d delegated the role of ‘official photographer’ to my husband but hadn’t told him. This picture is my sister’s.
Quite intellectual looking, I think… apart from the array of beer barrels as a backdrop.
You may also note the biscuits just to my right hand side. They were supposed to be avocados – well, they did look a bit avocado-ish, though I was worried they looked more like fried eggs (albeit green ones).
My friend Rachael asked for the recipe and, as I am pursuing an avocado-themed recipe series for the next few Mondays (see last week’s post for Chocolate Mousse), I thought I’d share it as they look like avocados, though there is no avocado in the ingredient list.
Making Mondays Marvellous: (Avocado) Chocolate Biscuits
Place 225g softened butter and 140g caster sugar in a bowl and beat together until light and fluffy. Beat in 1 egg yolk and 2 tsp vanilla extract (I used less, as I was icing the biscuits). Sift together 250g plain flour, 25g cocoa powder and a pinch of salt (I used salted butter so didn’t add extra salt). Mix into the butter/sugar/egg mixture. Then add 100g of finely chopped plain chocolate. Stir well. It should be a stiff dough, which you can roll out on a floured surface and cut into shapes. Put on a baking tray, spaced apart, and back at 190C for 10-15 minutes.
Helpful points to note:
- You’ll need a lot of flour for rolling. If you don’t need shapes, it would be much easier to create balls of dough and flatten them.
- The chocolate chunks can make cutting shapes awkward! Not all my pears were perfect…
- The avocado effect was simply using the same pear shape to cut out green sugar-paste icing, and cutting a hole in the middle (I used the letter ‘O’, though experimented with the number ‘0’ as well!)
- Do check your cutters. Some plastics don’t survive even the top level of the dishwasher. (There will be no more regular pear-shaped biscuits in our house now…)
And that was that!
General verdict: ????
(Of the 90 I made, only 5 came back, and 4 of them I’d hidden away!)
Thanks once again for your support. It was a wonderful afternoon and a delight to share the publication of my book with so many lovely people.
Don’t forget to buy the book – no recipes included! Beware the Falling Avocados is available as a paperback in the UK HERE and as a kindle version HERE. In the US the paperback is HERE and the kindle version is HERE.
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