There’s one particular office I go to where I always like to arrive burdened with biscuits. I take them in an old fashioned biscuit tin and I try to take something different each time.
These Brazil nut cookies are certainly different – it’s partly because of the nuts. There are loads of cookie recipes with pecans…walnuts even…but Brazil nuts, which I love, are unusual.
The other thing which makes them different is the texture – they certainly aren’t crisp and brittle like an English biscuit might be, nor are they gooey like a traditional north American cookie; they are a sort of nearly-cake. In a nice way.
I am also a great fan of chocolate Brazil nuts, a very successful pairing – so this recipe is wonderful with the molten dark chocolate drizzled over.
Recipe for cakey Brazil nut cookies
Makes about thirty
Ingredients
- 250g/8 oz butter
- 200g/1 cup golden caster sugar
- 2 eggs
- 2 tsps vanilla paste
- 160g/1¼ cups plain flour
- ½ tsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp salt
- 300g/10 oz Brazil nuts – roughly chopped
- 50g/½ cup desiccated coconut
- 100g/4 oz dark chocolate
Method
- Preheat the oven to 180°C.
- Put the butter and sugar into a large mixing bowl and beat with an electric whisk until it becomes pale and fluffy.
- Add one egg, and whisk in; then the other.
- Add the vanilla paste, whisk in.
- Whisk in the flour, baking powder and the salt.
- With a spoon, stir in the chopped nuts and the coconut.
- Drop tablespoons of the mixture onto a large silicone-lined baking sheet, allowing space for expansion for each.
- Bake for about ten minutes – they should be turning brown.
- Melt the chocolate in a bain marie.
- Take out and cool on a wire rack.
- Drizzle over the chocolate.
