I have a dilemma: in Australia we call round, sweet treats served with tea biscuits, or bickies. In America, where many of you lovely people are visiting from, they are called cookies, and biscuits are what we call scones. Sigh. The English language is fraught with dialect difficulties.
Hence the rather ugly backslash in my blog post headlines. i want as many people as possible to be able to find my blog posts and thanks to the marvels of SEO it is possible to see the most effective words. So until I can find a better alternative to ‘slash’ in my headlines it will stay.
But enough of all that.
These baked beauties, which I found in a back issue of delicious magazine and then tweaked, are called hot-chocolate cookies and hot (as in spicy) they are. Misses 6 & 8 weren’t fans but more sophisticated palates (hello, work colleagues) rated them. They are perfect for times when you want a cookie/bickie with more oomph than your average sweet bite.
They may not win first prize in a beauty pageant but ask yourself this: would you prefer a cookie that tastes great, or a pretty yet insipid-tasting one? I thought so.
GATHER:
120 grams dark chocolate chopped
120 grams butter at room temperature, diced
1 cup brown sugars
½ cup caster sugar
2 eggs
1 ¾ cups plain flour
½ cup cocoa powder
2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon cayenne powder
LET’S GET TO IT:
Preheat oven to 180C and line two trays with non-stick baking paper.
Place butter and chocolate in heatproof bowl placed over a bowl of simmering water. Make sure it is a snug fit and the bottom of the bowl doesn’t touch the water. Stir until just melted and lump-free. Remove from heat, set aside.
In bowl of electric mixer beat eggs, vanilla and sugar until thick and pale. Gently stir in melted chocolate and briefly combine.
Sift over flour, cinnamon and cayenne powder then stir until combined.
Roll into balls the size of walnuts, place on tray, and gently flatten with a fork.
Bake for between 12-14 minutes or until set.
Leave on tray for 5 minutes before removing to wire rack.
the hungry mum 
Deliciousness over beauty any day Mrs H.
Awww, ta x
Totally called biscuits and I will fight any man who says otherwise. Unless they are bigger than me, in which case I will mock them from afar with my dulcet English tones.
These sound and look delicious. I fall prey to the language issue all the time as a Scot living in America. I offer my kids’ friends a biscuit and they look at me askance.
Oh wow – I bet you do! I can only imagine 🙂
I love your solution of the slash! 🙂 They look yummy.
Sometimes you just gotta go with the slash!
Reblogged this on Chef Ceaser.
Totally in love with adding some spice to chocolate. These cookie biscuits look like they hit all the right spots for me!
Thanks – sometimes you need to spice up your life 🙂
We too call them biscuits in South Africa.They look very yummy, thanks for sharing the recipe
Oh, that’s interesting. Maybe it is a southern hemisphere thing?
Yum! Looks delicious!
Thanks – they vanished rather quickly 🙂
Yummy! I love the dash of cayenne pepper that I’m sure adds a wonderful kick. Whether they are biscuits or cookies, they sound delicious 🙂
Cheers Heather – the kick can be as strong as you like if you add a bit more or less of the pepper.
Oh, yes, I am all for spicy chocolate cookies. Cayenne, cinnamon and chocolate are a blessed trinity in my eyes.
Cheers!
Oh, what great taste you have 🙂 Hope you get to make these soon x
I bet these do have a bit of a kick! And I think they look fantastic!
Thanks! They aren\t for the faint of tastebud, that;s for sure!
I might have a solution for the SEO. When you name a post whatever you want, just under the name you can edit the url to reflect anything you wish. The search engine will work on that, saving you the clutter on the actual post name. Frankly, I love Bickie!
Oh, really? That’s good to know. Can you just swing by and give me a crash course in SEO?! #needHelp
Conversation with my brother, the computer guru “I need help with SEO!” “What does that stand for,” he asks, just to make me squirm! 🙂 ” “Oh, he says (but of course he knows) I just hate those TLA’s!” “What’s a tla?” I ask, with a sinking heart – really, MORE stuff to learn about?? “Three letter acronym.” Yeah, thanks, bro. Now I feel like even more of an ID 10 T.
ha! This actually made me LOL (oops, another TLA!). I find most of the seo stuff tends to be the blind leading blind – I reckon if everyone just shared their little nugget of knowledge it would be fab.
I know, right! Well, you have my nugget! I went to a blogger’s conference not too long ago and they said that seo is not as important as it used to be and really emphasized the hubs of facebook, pinterest, instagram, etc.
They basically said that blogs are fading and content living on in other arenas – and blogs, therefore are often only being “stored up” until someone wishes to view the content if full. So rather than someone using a search engine to find a cookie or a bickie 🙂 people are just shuffling through their instagram or pinterest.
Bet you know my answer already Hungry Mum! I want a cookie packed with punch & flavour and I’m sure they deliver too 🙂
Punch! I like it and these babies absolutely have it in spadefuls!
I totally want to start calling cookies bickies. Fantastic! And these LOOK fantastic. Great flavors–most sophisticated 🙂
Cheers Liz – do it and start a revolution 🙂
ha ha, yes, since I have been traveling in Europe I have learned so many variations to the English language! It is pretty funny 🙂 Yummy looking cookies!
So many strange meanings of words – in Australia we would NEVER say ‘root for’ someone as it has a waaaay different meaning to how the Americans use it!
ha ha, so funny!
Damn if these cookies are not calling out my name, they look delicious!
And I grew up on bickies and I still call them that 😛
Cheers
Choc Chip Uru
Totally CCU – I am #teamBickie all the way!
Omg they look fantastic
Awww, ta Sara x
Super Yummy!
I need to make these again – they are really good.
These cookies look amazing! Love the spice, so good!
Thanks! Makes a nice change from overly sweet bickies.
Whatever yu call these….you seem to have cooked them to perfection. I just love the cayenne in them.
awww, ta!
Oh heck, they look GOOD! Chocolate and chilli is the best combo. Oh and the name – it’s Cookie Monster’s fault. I have that cute little red plate too, hello Daiso!
Yes – damn you, Muppets! I hit Daiso hard and often when we were in Japan. I think the record was three stores in a day #addict
Nothing wrong with using a ‘slashie.’ Call this cookies/ biscuits what you want…whatever the case they look delicious! 🙂
Slashies just come in so handy, don’t they?! Thanks for your sweet words 😉
These look great!
Never thought about adding cayenne pepper to desserts before 🙂
It adds a punch – cuts through the sweet to make things a bit more interesting 😉
No matter what we call the food, deliciousness is deliciousness the world ’round! 😀 These sound like they are entirely in that category!
xo
very true! Is all v ‘it’s a small world’, really 😉
I always prefer that it tastes good than look good! These cookies look utterly tasty too! Well done!
cheers! These are quite unusual but they seemed to be a winner 🙂
I think so too! 🙂
I love that the title is so SEO friendly 🙂 good job! Spice + chocolate is a great mix. I made something similar once with caramel as well in between the two biscuits for a Mexican party. They went down a treat!
hahaha! I really need to go to SEO bootcamp 😉 Your bickies sound divine.