Boyfriend biscuits and quadruple chocolate

The Boy often gets irritated at my baking. Actually, it’s more my ingredients – he loves baked goods, he just isn’t very adventurous. I had to trick him into eating my chocolate basil crinkle biscuits (I simply omitted the fact that they had basil in them); he flat out refused to try my lemon thyme cupcakes; he didn’t like the earl grey poached pears that I made!

“I like what I like,” he says, like a true Yorkshireman.

So, in preparation for Valentine’s day, I’m sharing a recipe that even the pickiest of partners will like – a quadruple chocolate biscuit. They’re cake-like and they have four types of chocolate in them – who could say no to that??

Plus, there’s no fancy icing or sticky things that will get in the way when they shove them into a container to take to work. I joked that they are a masculine biscuit – no fuss, no frills, lots of flavour… they’re kind of bumpy and ugly because of all of the chocolate in them, but The Boy did not care one iota.

Boyfriend biscuits

Makes 70

• 2 cups brown sugar
• 220g butter
• ¾ cup cocoa
• 2 tsp bicarb
• 2 eggs
• 3 ½ cups flour
• ½ cup milk
• ¼ cup milk chocolate
• ¼ cup dark chocolate
• ¾ cup white chocolate

Preheat the oven to 180°C and line two baking trays with baking paper.

Mix together your brown sugar and butter. Toss the cocoa and bicarb into the mixture, followed by the eggs and give them a good mix. Add two cups of the flour and the milk, mixing to ensure there are no clumps in the mixture. Add the rest of the flour and mix.

Add in the chocolate chips and mix briefly to distribute them throughout the mixture.

You’ll notice that I used different sized choc chips – this is because I had them all floating around in the pantry, and realised that this recipe is a great way to use up spare chocolate chips. It doesn’t matter what size or shape they are, just pop them in the mixture. This mixture is delicious raw, in case you were wondering.

Take a tablespoon of mixture and roll it into a ball – they’ll be beautifully glossy. Repeat 70 times*.

Pop them onto your lined trays and into the oven for 13-15 minutes. Transfer to a cooling rack and prepare to win the award for “best partner.”

*This mixture makes a lot of biscuits, you’ve been warned! I would recommend making it for a large gathering, or freezing it in batches.