Chocolate Pakistani Bakery Biscuits

If nostalgia had a flavour, this would be mine

My version of this Pakistani classic has a few changes to tailor this recipe to a bit more of a mature palette for me. The addition of the dark cocoa makes the biscuits more chocolatey while being less sweet.

If you want to impress some guests with homemade cookies during chai time, i’d recommend trying this recipe out

Ingredients

For the biscuits

• 150g unsalted butter, room temp & soft

• 75g icing sugar, sifted to remove lumps

• 1/2 tsp vanilla essence

• 1 egg, room temperature

• 190g all purpose flour

• 12g cocoa powder, unsweetened/ dark

• 2g instant coffee powder

For the glaze

• 120g icing sugar

• 10g cocoa powder, dark

• 1/4 quarter salt

• 30ml milk, to thin. (this is an approximate, you want it to be loose nough to pipe but stiff enough to hold on your biscuit)

Method

Making the bikkies

• In a medium sized bowl, combine your room temperature butter with the icing sugar. Make sure to sift the sugar to get rid of any lumps and cream together until slightly lighter in color

• Add your egg, also at room temp, and whisk together until incorporated. Add vanilla. Whisk again.

• Combine all your dry ingredients into the same bowl (flour, cocoa, salt and coffee powder), then sift into your butter mixture bowl.

• Once sifted, mix together with a spatula until its a thick, pipeable batter.

  The consistency of the batter also really depends on the temperature of your kitchen, if it’s too hot, the butter may melt too quickly and you’ll lose definition of the cookie grooves. If it’s too cold, it may be very stiff and hard to pipe. Adjust as per your kitchen needs i.e, fridge the batter if too warm, or leave out at room temp if too cold

• Using a piping bag with an open star nozzle, add in your batter and make small swirls to create the perfect cookie shape. Watch the video back to see the motion you can copy.
  If you don’t have a piping bag, you can also divide the batter into 15-20g round balls using just your hands.

• Bake at 180 for 12-15 minutes. For a firmer biscuit, cook an additional 3-4 mins.

Making the glaze

• For the icing, combine all the ingredients into small bowl other than the milk.

• Once combined, slowly stream in the milk.
  You may not need all 30 ml. This depends on the sugar, & the cocoa you’re using. You are aiming for it to be stiff when it dries, but also able to spread. Test it on a biscuit out of the oven to see what the texture is like. If too thin, add more icing sugar. If too thick, add more milk a tsp at a time.

• Let the biscuits air dry until the tops of the chocolate are dried and hardened, (about an hour) before transferring to a airtight jar. They should keep up to a week if stored properly (and if they last that long hehe)