Chocolate covered gingerbread for World Chocolate Day!

Now it’s World Chocolate Day on July 7th, so I thought it would only be right to crack open a Cadbury cook book to celebrate.

This is actually my mum’s cookbook, and I remember always loving the look of the biscuits on the front cover. I’m not sure why it’s taken me until age 33 to make them, but never mind.

On finding the recipe in the book, it turns out they are chocolate covered gingerbread biscuits, described as ‘reminiscent of lebkuchen’ which in turn is described on Wikipedia as ‘a traditional German baked Christmas cookie, somewhat resembling gingerbread.’

Making the dough was really easy, because do you know what I had on my side? I was at home for the weekend so I had my mum’s Kenwood stand mixer, which she’s had for 55 years. Apparently she’s had to have two new motors in it, but still, I don’t think that’s bad going.

 

Anyway I popped the ingredients in the Kenwood, which mixed them all up into a dough. Things did get sticky when I opened the black treacle and it ended up on the scales, on a tea towel, on my hands and all over the side as well as in the mixer.

Then I kneaded the dough a bit and popped it into the fridge for half an hour. It really couldn’t have been more straightforward. Low effort, high impact.

The book says this dough is enough for 25 biscuits. “This won’t make 25,” I scoffed as I rolled out the dough. “It simply won’t!”

And 35 baked and cooled gingerbread hearts later, technically I was right. Maybe I should have rolled them a bit thicker, but to be honest, once they’re covered in chocolate I would have wanted them to be any thicker.

Then I went on to decorating them with various chocolate, which was great fun. I spooned on the chocolate and then sort of balanced the biscuit on two knives to give it a tap and even out the chocolate.

I got a bit carried away and did some in white chocolate too, as a bit of an experiment. Honestly, I’m such a maverick.

As is his way, my dad said: “yeah, they’re alright, they’re nice.” My mum liked the flavour.

This whole escapade only took a couple of hours, and I‘m actually quite pleased with how they look. I think they look quite polished! And they tasted great too, enough ginger to cut through the sweetness of the chocolate, and a perfect texture. I’d definitely make these again.

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