Arjen’s Chilli Chocolate Shortbread

Ingredients

A batch of Arjen's Chilli Chocolate Shortbread cookies

  • 250g baking butter (variety with salt and cream), softened
  • 2/3 cup icing sugar
  • 2 cups plain flour
  • 1 cup gluten free flour (contains tapioca as well as rice flour), this will create a nicer texture compared to the usual plain rice flour!
  • 1 tbsp cacao
  • 1 tsp chilli powder

Instructions

  1. Mix all ingredients together until the texture of the mixture resembles breadcrumbs – food-processor or hand-held electric mixer work best.
  2. Form dough by pressing together.
  3. Roll a decent chunk of the dough out on board dusted lightly with flour (approx 5mm thick, but more will work fine too although it may affect baking time).
  4. Cut out shapes, transfer to baking tray(s) also lightly dusted with flour. Works best if you grab the off-cuts from the outside rather than from the side of the shapes.
  5. Recycle off-cuts (via step 2) until all dough used.
  6. Bake at 160’C for about 30 minutes. Cookies should be dry and firm but not gone dark.
  7. Cool on wire rack.
  8. Keep in a metal cookie tin to keep fresh – although I’m quite sure they won’t last very long ;-)

Notes

  • Quantity: number of cookies of course depends entirely on shape, size and thickness.
  • Vegan: use vegetable based butter (such as Nuttelex) – you may need to add a pinch of salt.
  • Gluten-free: substitute the regular flour with same amount of gluten free flour.
  • Recipe neatly in line with Arjen & Stewart’s essential food groups ;-)
  • Best not nibble the dough, uncooked tapioca (cassava) contains toxins. It’s fairly dry anyway, so quite unlike cake mix it won’t really stick to the processing equipment. Just bake and enjoy!
  • Creative Commons Licence This recipe is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.