Hazelnut Biscuits

(Or cookies, if you’re American.)

 I had some hazelnut meal (flour) left over from something I made earlier and decided to try out this recipe for hazelnut shortbread biscuits. It was quick and easy to make and I’m happy with the results. It’s one of the recipes I’m trying out for my Christmas biscuit collection to give as a gift.

I didn’t have pure icing sugar (confectioners’ sugar) so I used soft icing sugar. I don’t think it made any difference, actually, and the biscuits worked well. The recipe also called for Chocolate Hazelnut Nutella to sandwich two bikkies together, but I didn’t have any so I used Nestlé Dark Choc Melts.

After the biscuits had baked, and left to cool a few minutes so I could handle them, I simply turned the biscuits over and placed a choc melt on each and returned them to the oven, which was off but still hot. A few minutes was all it took to melt the chocolate and I spread it out with a knife and then pressed another biscuit onto it. In the pic above, you can see some of the sandwiched biscuits, and a couple of bikkies, one with  melted chocolate and the other with an unmelted choc melt so you can see the size.

I will definitely make these again. They tasted good, not too sweet, and even plain with no chocolate they were quite moreish. The recipe said to pipe the uncooked mix to make it look elegant (as it shows on the website) , but a lot of the comments said that was too hard, and to just roll the mix into little balls and press down with a fork. I pressed mine down with the patterned base of a small crystal ornament and liked the effect. It’s not as elegant as the website piped ones, but I like the effect. However next time I’ll make the biscuits smaller — about the size of the space left  by joining my thumb and finger. They’ll be daintier, I think, which will look nicer as a gift. And with the chocolate in between, they’re quite rich, so maybe I’ll just have them as single biscuits with a chocolate base.

I suspect these would be just as nice made with almond flour. Next timeI ‘m going to try it with gluten-free flour, as I want to make a gluten-free collection as well. I have several more hazelnut recipes to try, like this one and this one with a yummy looking maple glaze but most of them involved chopping up hazelnuts, and I didn’t have any nuts, only the hazelnut meal. I also have a yen to try these little hazelnut meringues, which look very pretty.

Do you like hazelnuts? When you read recipes on-line, do you read the comments? I always do, and sometimes it’s the difference between trying the recipe or not. This one had a lot of 5 star reviews.