These shortcakes are very chocolatey, fun and vegan. Anyone can make them. All you do is mix the ingredients, bake them, dip in warm chocolate and leave to cool. They taste amazingly buttery even though there’s no butter in them and are perfect as a gift for your loved ones (…or loved ones),  in a cellophane bag or a small box with a red ribbon because I think a homemade present is really thoughtful. I’ve tried these out on friends who can’t tell they are dairy free, in fact they even preferred them to normal biscuits made with butter!

Recipe
Makes around 20 cookies depending on the size of your cookie cutter

Ingredients:

1 cup of mild coconut oil or butter
3/4 cup golden caster sugar
2 1/2 cups of plain flour (I use white organic spelt flour)
1/2 cup of unsweetened cocoa powder plus more for rolling out the dough
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon of salt
200g of dark chocolate or white dairy free chocolate (now available from my Sainsbury’s)
Decorations

How

Preheat the oven to 170c.

Firstly, line a biggish baking tray with parchment paper or a silicon sheet. Set aside.
Mix the coconut oil and the sugar together in a mixing bowl or food processor. Add in the flour, salt and cocoa and mix together to form a dough. Wrap in cling film and place in the fridge for half an hour or so to slightly firm the dough up. After which it will need a quick kneading.
Roll the dough out to a thickness of roughly 1/2cm (£1 coin) and using cocoa powder instead of flour other wise it will go greyish. This is very messy and tricky but worth it…If the dough gets too soft and starts to get sticky again put it back in the fridge to firm up again… and then knead it before roll it or pat it flat. Choose your favourite cookie cutter and stamp out about 20 cookies, carefully using a blunt knife place to lift them and place them on the prepared baking sheet.
Bake for about 8-12 minutes depending on their size and then leave them on the baking tray to cool. They are very soft when they come out of the oven so be careful yo not knock them.
Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of gently simmering water and when melted dip or drizzle over the biscuits. You can also sprinkle them with chopped nuts, glacé ginger pieces, coconut chips, freeze dried raspberries, sprinkles, icing or any way you fancy.

I shop at:
Waitrose
Sainsbury’s
Tesco
Lidl