Earlier this week, the Tingle Factor item was a dripping pot. You can see the post here. Roy was fascinated, and slightly horrified, by the idea of dripping, just like the children at work had been. As for the idea of using dripping in cakes and biscuits, he thought this was ludicrous. When I showed him a cookbook of 'Wartime Recipes' (put out by The Emily MaPherson College of Domestic Economy and the Dried Fruits Publicity Committee during WW2), almost all of which use dripping, he was really taken with what the recipes would be like, and whether you could make them work today without using dripping. Together we looked through the recipes and found one which we would like to try. So this week, Roy Creates War Time Chocolate Drops.
Note: because of the age of the recipe, the quantities were originally in ounces. Roy thought that, to make the recipe easier for you to make, we should convert it to grams. We are working on 30 grams to 1 ounce.
You Will Need:
- 60 grams butter. The original recipe calls for lard or dripping, but butter worked just fine.
- 60 grams brown sugar
- 1 tablespoon milk
- 90 grams self-raising flour
- 1 teaspoon cocoa
- 1 teaspoon coffee essence (if you want a stronger coffee flavour, use a teaspoon of instant coffee and dissolve it in the hot butter)
- Pinch of salt
- 90 grams chopped dried fruit (Roy likes raisins, so we used them, but you could use sultanas, currants or mixed peel or a mixture of them all - the original calls for sultanas, currants and raisins)
- Whole almonds. You can cut them in half if you want (Roy decided to). You want one for the top of each biscuit. Roy made 24 biscuits (you might make more or less, depending on how generous you are) so you need about 24 almond pieces.
- Note: you could use cherries or even chocolate bits instead of the almond if you wanted a different look and taste.
Method:
Note: we are using the 2010 method - they didn't have microwaves or baking paper, but we think a few modern short-cuts are acceptable!
- Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and line two biscuit trays with baking paper.
- Melt the butter in the microwave, in 30 second bursts. Check it in between and swirl it around in the bowl to help it melt.
- Add the sugar and beat it with a wooden spoon until the butter and sugar are well mixed. They will start to look like a really rich caramel sauce.
- Let the mixture of butter and sugar (and coffee if you use instant coffee powder) cool down.
- Still using the wooden spoon, stir in the coffee essence and milk and throughly mix it together.
- Add the flour, cocoa, salt and fruit, and mix it all together until well combined.
- Next, you will be rolling the mix into balls. To make this easier, you can leave the mix to stand for about 10 minutres. The flour will absorb some of the moisture making it easier to roll. Roy rolled some of his earlier than this and the mix was very sticky and difficult to roll neatly. The biscuits looked 'neater' when we waited for the mix to settle.
- Place the balls onto your trays (Roy put 9 to a tray) and gently press an almond into the top of each.
- Bake for about 10 minutes or until they look set. They will still be a bit soft when they come out of the oven, but they should firm up quickly.
- Transfer the biscuits to a wire rack to cool and enjoy!