Coffee, chocolate & Nutella biscuit sandwiches

This recipe for coffee, chocolate, and Nutella biscuit sandwiches comes from Cait McWilliams who was the winner of the second season of The Great South African Bake Off. I’m obsessed with baking so I love this show which sees a set of 12 contestants taken through the baking ringer until one is finally crowned the best baker.  

Baking is a global phenomenon and The Great South Africa Bake Off showcases the best recipes, bakes and decoration tips from across the country. It is really wonderful to see people from various backgrounds of our rainbow nation put their flair and spin on classic baking recipes.

Cait McWilliams who won last year’s competition is also the youngest winner ever of The Bake Off globally and I knew when I saw her that she had all the potential. I also chose to make her chicken pie last year, which was one of the showstopper recipes, and this was before I knew that she won.

I tend to call all biscuits cookies these days because if you are writing recipes for the internet you need to take your American audience into consideration and biscuits are a completely different thing over there.

South Africa follows the British protocol of calling our biscuits biscuits and we differentiate them from an American-style cookie. A cookie by definition would be something made from a scoopable dough and would be free-forming, i.e. you wouldn’t need to cut it into a shape.

They tend to be chewier and softer than biscuits, which are always crunchy snappy little pastry treats. These coffee, chocolate, and Nutella biscuits are definitely more biscuits in terms of a British or South African classification but either way, they are very delicious. They are not too sweet and have a hint of bitterness from the coffee making them the perfect partner to the incredibly decadent Nutella ganache icing filling.

A few other biscuit recipes you might like:

My best-ever baking recipes on Drizzleanddip

Shortbread biscuit balls with a chocolate middle

Alison Roman’s salted butter & chocolate chip shortbread cookies

Vanilla snap cookies

Peanut butter shortbread

Airfryer choc chip cookies

White chocolate, cranberry & pecan nut cookies

Espresso chocolate chip cookies

Recipe – makes about 30 biscuits

Coffee, chocolate & nutella biscuit sandwiches

Chocolate & Nutella ganache is sandwiched between lightly coffee-flavoured cookies (biscuits).

Print Recipe

Prep Time:15 minutes mins

Cook Time:15 minutes mins

Ingredients

Coffee cookie/biscuit:

• 115 gm butter softened
• 100 gn caster sugar
• ½ tsp vanilla extract
• 2 tsp ground coffee / instant coffee
• 1 large free-range egg
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 220 gm all-purpose flour or cake flour
• pinch of salt

Chocolate hazelnut icing:

• 25 gm dark chocolate 70%
• 1 Tbsp butter
• 2 – 3 Tbsp milk
• ¼ cup Nutella
• 1 cup / 250ml icing sugar sifted
• ½ tsp vanilla extract
• 15 – 20 gm hazelnuts roughly chopped

Instructions

To make the cookies:

• Preheat the oven to 180C / 350F and line a large baking tray with silicone or baking paper.
• Cream the butter, sugar, coffee and vanilla in a bowl with an electric mixer. Add the egg and beat until light and fluffy. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt and briefly mix.
• Turn the dough out onto a surface dusted with flour and roll it out to about 5mm thick and cut out rounds with a cookie cutter. I used a 6cm round. Place on the baking sheet and bake for 12 – 15 minutes until lightly golden.
• Remove and cool on a wire cooling rack.

Chocolate hazelnut filling:

• Put the chocolate, butter and Nutella into a microwave-proof bowl and microwave in 30-second intervals until the chocolate melts. Remove every 30 seconds and stir to see if it’s melted.
• Add the sifted icing sugar, vanilla and milk and beat until smooth. Add the chopped hazelnuts and allow to cool slightly until it firms up. If necessary, place the icing in the fridge for a few minutes to cool and thicken.
• Spread a layer of the chocolate, and Nutella icing on a biscuit and then sandwich another biscuit on top and squeeze gently to seal it together.  

Servings: 30 cookies

Author: Sam Linsell

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