Chocolate Butter Biscuits

We had a fair bit of chocolate as part of the Chocolate Cookalong, which was April's Irish Foodies Cookalong so I thought when it came to making a dessert another chocolate dish would just be a little too indulgent. However, we can always manage a couple of biscuits with a cuppa so I decided to make a few to have as dessert. As I was growing up we seemed to finish most meals with a biscuit and a cup of tea, which is a real 'Irish' thing to do therefore these biscuits aren't out of place when it comes to dessert.

These are great for making with children as they can decorate them as they please. I melted dark, milk and white chocolate separably for drizzling over the cooled biscuits. I also decorated a few with some salted peanuts, which were really tasty!

Ingredients
375g (13oz) plain flour
150g (5oz) caster sugar
200g (7oz) butter, chilled and diced
1 large egg, lightly beaten
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
200g (7oz) milk chocolate or 50g (2oz) milk, dark and white chocolate, broken into pieces for dipping

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 200C/fan 180 / gas mark 5. Line 2 baking trays with parchment paper.
2. Sift the flour into a bowl. Add the sugar and butter and either blend in a food processor or rub between your fingertips until the mixture resembles bread crumbs. Add the egg and the vanilla and blend again or mix together with your hands, until the mixture comes together as a firm dough.
3. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill for at least 15 minutes.

4. Roll out on a lightly floured board to a thickness of about 1/8-inch. Cut out the cookies using a fluted cutter.
5. Place on the baking tray and bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until lightly golden. Cool on a wire rack.
6. Once the cookies have cooled, melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water. If using one flavour of chocolate only, select a bowl that you can fit your hand into so you can dip the cookies into it. If you are using a variety of flavours of chocolate, once you've melted each one, pour the individual chocolates into separate plates and dip the surface of each cookie in the chocolate before returning them to the wire rack to set.
7. The cookies can simply have one surface dipped in the chocolate or you could decorate further by drizzling with contrasting coloured or flavoured chocolate. Enjoy.