Vegan Hazelnut Shortbread
These chocolate dipped vegan hazelnut shortbread cookies are easy to make, crisp, crumbly, nutty, buttery, melt in the mouth and very moreish!
Servings 24 biscuits
Ingredients
- 120 g (4 oz/scant 1 cup) skinned roasted hazelnuts
- 160 g (⅔ cup) vegan block butter slightly softened
- 100 g (½ cup) caster or granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 35 g (3 ½ Tablespoons) cornflour (cornstarch)
- 175 g (1 ¼ cups +2 ½ Tablespoons) plain (all-purpose) flour
To Decorate:
- 200 g (7 oz) dark chocolate finely chopped
- a handful skinned roasted hazelnuts finely chopped
Instructions
- Line a couple of baking sheets with baking parchment.
- Grind the roasted skinned hazelnuts to a fine flour in a food processor, blender or spice grinder. Be careful not to go too far or they will become oily and start turning into nut butter.
- Mix together the butter, sugar, vanilla and salt with a wooden spoon or spatula until well combined. Don't beat the mixture for too long however, you don't want to incorporate too much air.
- Add the ground hazelnuts, plain flour and cornstarch. Mix with a wooden spoon or spatula until the dough starts coming together, then gently knead it by hand until smooth.
- Roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface to about 8mm (⅓ in) thick. Use your choice of cutters to cut out as many cookies as possible. Bring together the scraps and re-roll to cut out more cookies. (If the dough is too soft to roll out, wrap and chill it in the fridge for an hour first).
- Place the cookies slightly spaced apart on the baking sheets. Pop them in the freezer for 15 minutes while you preheat the oven to 160℃/140℃ fan/325℉/gas mark 3.
- Bake the chilled cookies for 25-30 minutes until pale golden. Allow to cool on the baking sheets for a couple of minutes then transfer to a wire rack and allow to cool completely.
- Once the cookies have cooled, melt the chocolate, either in a bain marie or in short bursts in the microwave. Transfer it to a deep but narrow container, such as a wide mug. Check that the biscuits will fit in it first though!
- Dunk one half of the cookies in the chocolate, shake off the excess then place them on a wire rack. Sprinkle with chopped hazelnuts before the chocolate sets.
Notes
- All of my recipes are developed using grams, and as with all of my baking recipes I really do recommend using the metric measurements with a digital scale rather than the cup conversions. Cups are a wildly inaccurate measuring system and you will get far better, more consistent results using a scale, not to mention that it is also easier and less messy than cups!
- See post above for tips, details and step-by-step photos.
- Instead of dunking the biscuits in the chocolate, you can simply drizzle it over them, either with a teaspoon or using a piping bag with a small round nozzle.
- If you want shiny chocolate then you will need to temper it.
- If you can only get hold of unroasted hazelnuts then you will need to roast and skin them yourself. See post above for instructions.