Langues de chat

No, no worries, I'm not going to start blabbering about cats. For those who know me, this is something I could easily do for hours. But no, as usual, I am here to talk about cakes and these 'langues de chat' or 'cat's tongues' are a French classic and a cup of coffee's best friends. Usually, they come plain without any fancy chocolate 'hats' on but I thought they might look a bit boring, so decided to give them a little twist. Anyway, without much further ado, here's the recipe.

For 16 langues de chats, you need:
60 g butter
60 g flour
60 g sugar
2 egg whites
A couple of drops of vanilla extract
80 g of white and/or dark chocolate
Food colouring of your choice

1. Preheat your oven to 200°C. In a bowl, beat the butter until creamy. Add the sugar, vanilla extract and flour and mix well. Add the egg whites and mix again.
2. Grease and flour a baking sheet. Put your biscuit mixture into a pipping bag fitted with a plain nozzle and pipe out little sticks about 6 cm long and 2 cm wide. Make sure there's sufficient space between each biscuit as they will spread when baking. Put in the oven for about 7 to 8 minutes. If piping is your thing, they should be slightly thicker at the ends and have a 'waist' in the middle. But they taste just as yummy without.
3. Meanwhile, melt your white and/or dark chocolate in the microwave on medium heat for a couple of minutes. If using white chocolate, add a couple of drops of the food colouring of your choice (I think pastel colours work best for this kind of biscuit, so a tiny hint of green or red/pink colouring is enough). Once your biscuits are baked and cool, dip one end in the chocolate and leave to rest on a cooling rack.
4. And now it's time to make a cup of coffee...

Dark and white chocolate flowers

These flowers are really easy to make and yet look great with their black (the biscuit) and white (the ganache) contrast. I've shaped them as flowers just because I used the cookie cutters I have. But any shape will do. And they're so yum they disappear in a flash...see below!

To make 12 biscuits you need:

300 g of plain flour

25 g cocoa powder

120 g of icing sugar

200 g of butter

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 egg

200 g white chocolate

100 ml single cream

1. In a bowl, beat the butter until soft then add the icing sugar, vanilla extract and a pinch of salt. Add the egg and whisk until smooth. Sieve together the flour and cocoa powder and add to the mixture. Once well combined, cover the dough with cling film and leave to rest for at least two hours in the fridge.

2. Preheat the oven to 150°C. Roll out your dough and cut out 24 shapes, or more, with a 6 cm-diameter cookie cutter. With another 3 cm-cookie cutter, remove the centre of half the shapes. Bake your shapes on  a baking tray lined with baking sheet for 15 minutes. Leave to cool.

3. To make the white chocolate ganache, melt the white chocolate in a bowl placed over a small saucepan of simmering water. Separately, boil the cream and add to the white chocolate until you get a smooth mixture. Leave to set in the fridge.

4. On each full biscuit, place one teaspoon of ganache and cover with a hollowed biscuit. Et voila!