Valentines Chocolate Hearts!
These chocolate hearts are the perfect valentines day gift. They're made of two layers of cinnamon biscuit sandwiching a brown butter buttercream and biscoff spread filling, then coated in tempered chocolate. If you don't want to coat them in the tempered chocolate you can skip that step, and leave them as sandwich biscuits, which are equally as cute!
BROWN BUTTER
150G SALTED BUTTER
Place the butter in a pot and cook over a medium heat. Once the butter starts to bubble, whisk it constantly, scraping the base of the pot with the whisk, until you have a deep, nutty brown butter. Set aside to cool in the pot at room temperature before using to make the cookies and buttercream
CINNAMON BISCUITS
65G MELTED BROWN BUTTER
50G GOLDEN SYRUP
85G BROWN SUGAR
2 TBSP MILK
160G FLOUR
½ TSP BAKING SODA
1 TBSP CINNAMON
Preheat the oven to 180c. Whisk the butter, golden syrup, brown sugar and milk together, then stir in the flour, baking soda and cinnamon. Mix to form a dough, then roll the dough between two sheets of baking paper to about 3mm thick. Place the dough in the fridge for at least 20 minutes, or the freezer for at least 10 minutes, before using a heart shaped cookie cutter (the cutter I used is 5.5cm long and wide at the longest/widest points). Place the cut biscuits on a lined baking tray (I am using an airmat for even baking, but they will bake up nicely on a baking paper lined tray too). Re-roll the dough scraps and repeat the chilling/cutting process until you’ve used all the dough.
Bake the biscuits for 8-10 minutes until just starting to brown at the edges. Allow to cool at room temperature while you make the buttercream.
BROWN BUTTER BUTTERCREAM
60G BROWN BUTTER, SOFT BUT NOT MELTED
100G ICING SUGAR
1/16 TSP VANILLA BEAN PASTE
Whisk the soft brown butter, icing sugar and vanilla together. Continue to whisk, either by hand or with an electric hand mixer, until you have a light and airy buttercream. Spoon into a piping bag and cut a 1cm hole in the tip. Use the buttercream to assemble the heart biscuits.
ASSEMBLY
150G SMOOTH BISCOFF SPREAD
FLAKY SALT
300G DARK OR MILK (OR DARK MILK, I USED VALRHONA HUKAMBI) CHOCOLATE
Pipe a border of buttercream around half of the heart biscuits. Fill the centres with the smooth biscoff spread and sprinkle a touch of flaky salt on top of them , then press an unfilled biscuit on top to sandwich the filling. Set aside while you temper your chocolate.
Melt all but a few pieces of your chocolate in a bowl over a pot of simmering water. Allow your chocolate to cool to 32c. Use a fine grater to grate in your chocolate one piece at a time, stirring and checking the temperature between each piece. Once the chocolate reaches 29c, it is tempered and ready to use. Tempered chocolate will set very quickly, so you need to heat it as needed to keep it fluid, without going over 30c and losing the temper on your chocolate. If you go over 30c you need to begin the process again. If your chocolate is particularly thick you can add some coconut oil or cocoa butter to thin it out (do this when melting the chocolate, before tempering it. I normally add 10g of cocoa butter or 5g of coconut oil for every 100g of chocolate)
Place each biscuit face down into the chocolate, then flip it over so that it is completely coated in chocolate. Use a fork to lift it out and drain off any excess chocolate, then place on a sheet of baking paper. Every 3 biscuits or so, use the grater to shave a piece of chocolate over the hearts, so that the shaved chocolate curls sticks to the chocolate coating. Repeat this with all the remaining biscuits.
Allow the biscuits to sit overnight at room temperature before consuming - this will allow the buttercream to firm up so it doesn't squirt out when you bite into the biscuit. Coated biscuits will last up to one week in an airtight container.