South African coconut and chocolate biscuits (Romany Creams)
Coconut and chocolate pairs well in biscuits, which is why most biscuit-baking nations make some kind of coconut rough. One such biscuit is the Romany Cream, a commercially manufactured South African biscuit, which has a chocolate filling.
While we don't see the point of trying to mimick commercial baking, we definitely don't mind recipes that improve on the original. One such recipe has been crafted by the rather magical Karen Hart, from Toorkombuis.
Marietjie adapted Karen's recipe a little bit to match our own tastes and kitchen, and here it is.
This recipe makes 22 sandwiched biscuits, each weighing about 36 g.
Ingredients
For the biscuits:
- 25 g (1/4 cup) cocoa
- 2 1/2 Tablespoons (35 ml) 1 espresso shot of hot coffee (or 35 ml hot water)
- 175 g soft butter
- 175 g granulated sugar
- 30 g (1/4 cup) sweetened drinking chocolate powder - we used Pam's Malty Hot Choca her in New Zealand, but use your favourite brand of hot chocolate powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 140 gram (1 cup + 2 tablespoons) flour
- 120 gram (1 1/3 cup) desiccated coconut
For the filing:
- 150 g good chocolate - we used dark chocolate, but you can use milk chocolate if you prefer
- Optional: 1/3 cup of cream, to make ganache
Method
- Mix the cacao and hot coffee (or hot water) with a wooden spoon, to form a paste. Allow to cool.
- Add the butter, sugar, salt and vanilla to the bowl and mix well until creamy.
- Add the drinking chocolate powder.
- Add the baking powder, mix, and then add the flour and coconut and mix until well incorporated. We use a stand mixer.
- Use teaspoons or a small cookie-dough scoop to place teaspoon-sized balls of dough on a lined baking sheet. Use a fork to slightly flatten each ball.
- Bake in a pre-heated oven. The temperature depends on your oven: baking it at 160ºC for about 10 minutes works well in our oven, but you may want to bake it in a warmer oven, up to 180ºC.
- For the filling, either melt the chocolate and use it as is, or add up to 1/3 cup cream to make a ganache. Allow the mixture to cool for a few minutes, and spread the melted chocolate or ganache on the bottoms of half of the biscuits, and then place the other biscuits on top to make sandwiched biscuits.