shortbread biscuit balls with chocolate middles

Delicious, scrumptious and highly addictive little shortbread butter biscuits with chocolate in the middle.

I have had this recipe on my ‘to-bake’ list for over a year and since I first tasted them at my friend Peter Church’s book launch. He is the author of two books. The first is  ’Dark Video‘, the second ‘A Bitter pill’ – both edgy thrillers set in and around Cape Town, and worth a read if you haven’t already.

You find the best recipes in the most interesting places.

After biting into these soft and crumbly shortbread biscuits and then experiencing the unexpected joy if finding a lump of chocolate in the middle, I was sent directly to food heaven.

I hunted the recipe down. I took a photo of the recipe. I lost the photo of the recipe. I had to hunt it down again.

The recipe came from one Peter’s children’s school cookbooks. The ones where various parents contribute their favourite recipe. You know the ones? I totally love these books because people always put their best tried-and-tested recipes forward.

The recipe is short and the instructions easy, so Peter was able to tweet them to me.

I used some Cadburys milk chocolate  and some Valrhona Guanja which gives these biscuits a more sophisticated taste. Use whatever chocolate you prefer.

What you will need to make a batch of these delectable buttery balls:

• 210g butter
• 4t caster sugar (and extra for dusting)
• 1t boiling water
• 250g flour
• 200g slab of chocolate cut into half blocks

Pre heat the oven to 180 C. Mix the butter, sugar and water until combined. Add the flour and mix. Wrap some of the dough mixture around each half block of chocolate. This is a fairly tricky task and would be helpful if you got others to help.

Bake on a lined baking tray for 20 minutes. They don’t need to go too golden. Roll in caster sugar and allow to cool.

Seriously these are THE most awesome biscuits and that is all I am going to say about that.