does this recipe take the biscuit?

Of course I'm going to start this with an awful pun since the recipe is, well, a biscuit. (And they go well with a nice cup of tea.)

I bought The World of Thedas Volume Two a while back and I've been rereading it a bit over the past few weeks in my quest to try and finish Dragon Age Inquisition and when I remembered that the book contained a cookbook called The Whole Nug I knew that I had to attempt making something from it.

The recipe entitled Marie de Lac Erre's Sweet Ruin was it. The accompanying story that goes with the recipe is a fantastic anecdote and definitely in character for something that happened in Orlais within the narrative. I'm not completely following the recipe, but true to the story I will be making my own version of the shortbread.

I preheated the oven to 170℃ as the recipe didn't explicitely state, only that it needed to be a suitable temperature for shortbread and readied the ingredients for the actual biscuits.

I didn't feel like doing the mixing by hand, so I used a standmixer with a whisk attachment. Probably not the best one to use, but it's the one I'm most comfortable with.

I did end up having to hand mix it when I added the flour, and I had genuinely forgotten how sticky shortbread can be at times.

Rolling the dough out was harder than it really should have been. I kept having to flour both the board and the rolling pin after each time I rolled the dough out, although that was probably due to the temperature in the house. It's cold outside and the heater has been on nonstop, also the oven was on.

I was going to do these originally in crescent moon shapes, but I figured that a round biscuit was easier to dip into chocolate and fill when they were baked.

(The recipe initially made twenty-five biscuits, although dad and I shared one as it broke when I took them out of the oven. So twelve all up when sandwiched together.)

Speaking  of chocolate, I combined half dark chocolate and half milk chocolate in a bowl and tempered it. I used a microwave and not the stovetop. For one, it is a lot easier and far quicker and two, I didn't really want to make more mess than what I already had in the kitchen. (Even if I did clean up as I went.)

And honestly I could have stopped here, but I was dedicated to trying the recipe out in full. I made a buttercream, using vanilla instead of mint or orange and when the chocolate was cooled and hardened spread it out onto one side of the shortbread and sandwiching another biscuit on top.

A small butter knife like this is honestly the best thing to spread buttercream with on something like this!

I served them with a cup of Irish Breakfast tea, even though it's the middle of the afternoon it's going to be morning somewhere eventually.

The biscuit itself is buttery, the chocolate is quite rich and with the buttercream it's almost decadent. I don't recommend overindulging, but it all tastes really nicely together.

Of course I'm going to start this with an awful pun since the recipe is, well, a biscuit. (And they go well with a nice cup of tea.)

I bought The World of Thedas Volume Two a while back and I've been rereading it a bit over the past few weeks in my quest to try and finish Dragon Age Inquisition and when I remembered that the book contained a cookbook called The Whole Nug I knew that I had to attempt making something from it.

The recipe entitled Marie de Lac Erre's Sweet Ruin was it. The accompanying story that goes with the recipe is a fantastic anecdote and definitely in character for something that happened in Orlais within the narrative. I'm not completely following the recipe, but true to the story I will be making my own version of the shortbread.

I preheated the oven to 170℃ as the recipe didn't explicitely state, only that it needed to be a suitable temperature for shortbread and readied the ingredients for the actual biscuits.

I didn't feel like doing the mixing by hand, so I used a standmixer with a whisk attachment. Probably not the best one to use, but it's the one I'm most comfortable with.

I did end up having to hand mix it when I added the flour, and I had genuinely forgotten how sticky shortbread can be at times.

Rolling the dough out was harder than it really should have been. I kept having to flour both the board and the rolling pin after each time I rolled the dough out, although that was probably due to the temperature in the house. It's cold outside and the heater has been on nonstop, also the oven was on.

I was going to do these originally in crescent moon shapes, but I figured that a round biscuit was easier to dip into chocolate and fill when they were baked.

(The recipe initially made twenty-five biscuits, although dad and I shared one as it broke when I took them out of the oven. So twelve all up when sandwiched together.)

Speaking  of chocolate, I combined half dark chocolate and half milk chocolate in a bowl and tempered it. I used a microwave and not the stovetop. For one, it is a lot easier and far quicker and two, I didn't really want to make more mess than what I already had in the kitchen. (Even if I did clean up as I went.)

And honestly I could have stopped here, but I was dedicated to trying the recipe out in full. I made a buttercream, using vanilla instead of mint or orange and when the chocolate was cooled and hardened spread it out onto one side of the shortbread and sandwiching another biscuit on top.

A small butter knife like this is honestly the best thing to spread buttercream with on something like this!

I served them with a cup of Irish Breakfast tea, even though it's the middle of the afternoon it's going to be morning somewhere eventually.

The biscuit itself is buttery, the chocolate is quite rich and with the buttercream it's almost decadent. I don't recommend overindulging, but it all tastes really nicely together.