Cocoa Nib and Chestnut Shortbread

This is a favourite from my gluten free workshop days. We’d serve it with fresh berries and hot coffee. It’s only on revisiting it, that I realise this formula happens to be vegan too.

Harnessing the sweetness of chestnut flour, the texture of toasted cocoanut and studded through with nutty nibs of cocoa, this is a cookie to keep.  A simple 20cm cake tin will suffice, although I hanker for a thistle shortbread bake stone..

Source

100g chestnut flour

30g desiccated coconut, toasted

70g cornflour

100g ground almonds

1 tsp baking powder, (check if gluten free)

Pinch of salt

50g coconut sugar

2 tbsp cocoa nibs

1 tsp vanilla paste

120g sunflower oil, (I used half:half sunflower oil with coconut oil, as I had it to hand.)

Action

Preheat your oven to 180c.

Place the dry ingredients into a large bowl, and combine using a balloon whisk to remove any clumps.

Add the oil and vanilla paste and stir to combine. It may seem a little oily at first, but in the time it takes you to line the baking tin, the oil will be absorbed, and the texture become more dough like.

Press into a lined baking tin, and bake for 25 minutes.  Check after 15 minutes, to make sure the shortbread doesn’t catch.

The shortbread is baked when it’s just beginning to turn golden around the edges.

Remove from the oven and cut into portions, whilst the biscuit is soft – so much easier than when cool and hardened. Allow to cool in the tin.