Cocoa Biscuits with Almond Core

Easy and unexpectedly super delicious cocoa biscuits I baked today.
Based on a recipe in Eva Toneva's blog:

Ingredients:

• 125 g butter
• 100 g powdered sugar (the original said 50 g, seemed too little, however mine are a bit on the very sweet side, 75 g could be the golden mean)
• 120 g corn farina
• 40 g wheat flour
• 25 g cocoa powder
• 50 g roasted almonds

Beat the butter into a cream, add the dry ingredients and mix into soft dough.

Divide the dough in half and spread into two wicks, about an inch in diameter. Cut each dough wick into into 16 -18 pieces, put an almond into the middle of the piece and roll in a ball.

Place the balls on a tin, covered with baking paper and bake in a preheated oven at 180 C for 15 min.

While hot, the biscuits are too soft, but when they cool, they harden and keep form. Spread them with powdered sugar and enjoy with your morning coffee.

These biscuits are easy and quick to make and surprisingly delicious - they are crunchy, yet they melt in the mouth with a sweet cocoa taste, and the almond is the perfect finish to the bite.

However be aware - while munching my fourth little delight I made a quick mental calculation, that almost had me choking - every single biscuit is about 70 kcal, so ... consume moderately :))))

And a quick update on my husbands cardigan (The color is off, as usual - it's dark burgundy-brown, not bright red!, but my camera is obviously color-blind. Huge disappointment, Olympus!) The good news - I'm totally in love with the cable pattern I came up with after much swatching and drawing. The bad news - despite all that swatching and calculating, the front is too narrow and I had to start all over again. The risk with large gauge - I'm only 4 stitches off in my calculations, but 4 stitches equal an inch and two fronts mean two inches less width - a whole size down and hubby wants the cardigan wide enough.
I mean, I saw this coming after I finished the first diamond, but I thought I would compensate with the button bands. I suppose I just wasn't ready to face the truth - if I wanted this to work right, I had to start over. So, I continued doggedly until last night, when I reached the underarms, basted the front and the back and tried it on hubby - too narrow and to compensate I had to make the button-bands ridiculously wide. Well, all that was left to do was to swallow my disappointment and cast anew :((

Cappuccino Muffins

While browsing through Pepa Stoeva's cooking blog, I was inspired to make some muffins. Pep-40's blog features a variety of muffin recipes and as an avid chocolate and coffee lover my first natural choice were her cappuccino muffins. However, as I usually do, I changed the proportions for my muffins, reducing the oil and increasing the sugar - I do like my sweets less oily and very sweet! Other than that I followed her preparation instructions and both the mixture and the baking came out very successful.

Here's my interpretation of the recipe:

• 240 g flour
• 180 g sugar
• 1 pocket of instant cappuccino (12 g)
• 1 tea spoon of instant coffee
• 2 tea spoons of cocoa powder
• 1 pouch of baking powder (10 g)
• 2 eggs
• 200 g milk
• 80 g vegetable oil
• 50g white raisins

Preparation:

• Mix the flour, the baking powder, the instant coffee and the cocoa powder in a bowl. 
• Stir the eggs with the sugar, add the oil. 
• Dissolve the instant cappuccino in the milk and add the cappuccino milk to the egg, sugar and oil mixture. 
• Add the dry flour mixture to the liquids and stir. Add the raisins and stir some more.
• Preheat the oven at 180C.
• Distribute the paste into the muffin forms and bake for 25 min at 180C.
• Serve with coffee and enjoy.

This recipe gives 18 average size muffins (70 mm baking molds). My form is small, only 12 molds, so I used additional 5 silicon molds, which are a bit bigger. Next time I plan to adjust the recipe for just 12 cups, so we would eat them up faster and try some other variety - the possibilities seem countless.