Chocolate Mocha Pots with Cinnamon Shortbread

The little jars are the Gu dessert containers....you get to buy a dessert AND keep the jar!

The other night we went out for dinner to a friends house and I, of course, offered to take dessert. After trawling through multiple recipe books, blogs and cooking magazines and getting totally overwhelmed by the shear volume of recipes (my own fault I know), I finally settled on two. The first was the Hazelnut Pavlova Gateau Cake from Julie Le Clerc's newish book and this was the second one. I forgot to take photos of the the Hazelnut one which is ok as I don't think it was really my sort of thing so I probably wouldn't have posted it on here anyway. It did look lovely though.....

This was the second choice and the recipe comes from Peter Gordon's new cookbook called 'Everyday' While I don't normally go for his style of food this book is lovely and a little less 'fusion' than his other ones. This recipe is very very rich so if your aren't a diehard chocolate lover I wouldn't go for this. The cinnamon shortbread are pretty good too and are baked as a whole then sliced afterwards. I have never made shortbread this way before but I have to say it does give you nice clean cut lines. Next time, though I would cut the cinnamon down to maybe 1 tsp as I found it a bit strong. Oh and by the way all the liquid ingredients are weighed rather than measured because he says it makes it more accurate.

Chocolate Mocha Pots with Cinnamon Shortbread

280 g milk
250 g cream
2 tsp espresso ground coffee (the grains not the made espresso), or instant coffee
100 g caster sugar
4 egg yolks
200 g dark chocolate roughly chopped

Place the milk, cream, coffee and 50g caster sugar into a pot and slowly bring to a simmer stirring frequently. Turn the heat off, cover with a lid and leave to infuse for 10 mins.

Take the lid off and slowly bring back to the boil stirring as you do.

Whisk the egg yolks with the remaining 50g caster sugar. When the milk has come back to heat, whisk about a 1/3 of it into the eggs, then pour it back into the pan with the rest of the cream mixture.

Stir over a moderate heat until the custard coats the back of a spoon (takes 2-4 mins). Take off the heat and whisk in the chocolate until it's incorporated, then pour through a fine sieve a couple of times to remove the coffee grounds (if this is what you have used). Pour into glasses or ramekins and put in the fridge for about 4 hours.

Serve with some lightly whipped cream on top and the shortbread.

Cinnamon Shortbread

250 g unsalted butter at room temperature
160 g caster sugar
250 g flour
130 g cornflour
2 tsp ground cinnamon (I think 1 tsp would be enough)
1 pinch salt

Preheat oven to 170C and line a tray with baking paper.

Cream butter and sugar. Sift together the flour, cornflour, cinnamon and salt and mix gently into the creamed mixture.

Pat out on the tray with your hands or a rolling pin until you get a rectangle about 1 cm thick. Cut with a sharp knife into squares or bars.

Bake 20-25 mins until golden then cut them again where you have already cut. cool on the tray for 5 mins then transfer them to a rack to cool completely.