Black & White Biscuits | Christmas Baking | Blogmas Day 7

Thursday, December 07, 2017

My first batch of Christmas biscuits for this year were black and white biscuits. Anything chocolatey was always a big hit with me as a kid - and let's be honest, still is - so it came as no surprise that I chose to make these first. They usually come as either swirls or chess boards but the chess board look is probably a bit out of my baking-league so I went for swirls instead. You don't need a lot of fancy ingredients to make these bad boys and yet they really stick out on your Christmas table.

Here's what you'll need

For the dough:

🎄 250g wheat flour

🎅 1 tsp baking powder

🎄 150g sugar

🎅 1 sachet of vanilla sugar

🎄 pinch of salt

🎅 1 little vial of rum aroma (~2ml)

🎄 1 egg

🎅 125g soft butter

Extra for the dark dough:

🎄 15g cocoa powder

🎅 15g sugar

🎄 1 tbsp milk

Extra:

🎅 1 egg white

Mix all the ingredients for the dough together and knead until you've got a smooth ball of dough. Separate it into two equal parts. In a different bowl, mix together all you need for the darker dough, then thoroughly knead that into one half of your dough.

Once your black and white dough balls are ready, roll them out and roll them in cling film, then put them in the fridge for at least 30 minutes to cool. This makes it easier to handle later.

After that time you roll both doughs out into equal size squares. Brush the white dough with some egg white and cover it with the black dough, then brush on some egg white on this too. Now comes the dangerous part, tightly rolling this up from the long side, not the small side! I got a few little tears in my dough here even though I tried to be really careful so I suggest you work with A LOT of flour covering your working surface as well as the dough, I guess that'll make it a little easier. Once you've got that, pop the whole thing back in cling film and back in the fridge for another hour or longer. This will make cutting it a lot easier later on.

Now preheat your oven to 180°C and take your dough out of the fridge. Cover a baking tray with greaseproof paper and start cutting the dough in slices of about 1/2 cm and pop them on the tray. Make sure you leave some room in between as they will rise due to the baking powder and you don't want all your hard work to turn into one giant cookie do you? Put the tray into the preheated oven for about 15 minutes, then immediately pull the baking paper and the cookies off the tray so they can cool down and harden.

And there you go, some fancy looking biscuits, that taste absolutely delicious! Obviously, as with every Christmas biscuit, these are best made while listening to your favourite festive playlist and having a sip or two of mulled wine ;-)

Lots of Love,
Jess xx