2. Chocolate Espresso Snowcaps

To keep me occupied for the summer (and to make a bit of dollar) I’m temping in London. My current office is air conditioned, the people are good and it’s keeping me busy. During my first couple of days my coworkers asked me about my hobbies and I told them about baking. I may have gushed a little, because baking became a buzz word. The hints for me to bring stuff in became less and less subtle, eventually ending with my manager finishing off the weekly round up email saying:

“We are all a little disappointed we have yet to experience any of your famous baked goods... maybe next week?”

Alright. Hint taken.

My office has a reasonable age range, so I wanted something that’d appeal to the older crowd as well as satisfy the sweet tooth of, well, me. I also didn’t want to make just cookies, so I thought about snowcaps. I have been using the same recipe for snowcaps for ages, I have no idea where I got it from now, but it would do as a base for this modified recipe. I just had to make them more grown up. And what’s more grown up than coffee?

These went down a storm at the office, with my favourite review coming in email form. Just one sentence.

“Fuck me that is glorious”

I’ll take that.

Makes 24-30 cookies

Ingredients

1/2 cup (65g) self-raising flour
1/4 cup (30g) cocoa
4 tsp instant coffee/espresso powder
pinch of salt
4 tbsp (55g) butter
2/3 cup (130g) light brown sugar
1 egg
4 oz (115g) dark chocolate, melted and cooled
1 tbsp milk
Icing sugar for rolling

Method

Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
Beat in the egg and milk.
Fold in the flour, cocoa, coffee powder and salt. Once combined, fold in the melted chocolate.
Turn your dough out onto a clingfilmed chopping board and smooth into a rectangle about 1/2” thick.
Put your dough in the freezer for at least 45 minutes.
Preheat oven to 175C
Using a sharp knife, slice your dough into 24-30 squares and roll each square into a ball. (colder hands will get less messy! Marginally.)
Roll each of your balls in icing sugar, making sure to get a thick covering, and place on a baking tray about 2 inches apart.
Bake for 12-13 minutes.
Allow to cool slightly before transferring to a cooling rack as they will be soft straight out of the oven.

Hope you enjoy these as much as my office did!