These Afghan Biscuits are crunchy, sweet and chocolatey. Made from corn flakes and topped
with chocolate icing, it isn’t hard to see why these are such a classic in New Zealand!
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We’re going to start by creaming the butter and sugar together. In a medium sized bowl
or the bowl of your stand mixer add in 225g, 1 cup or 2 sticks of room temperature butter.
You want to make sure your butter is at room temperature here as it’ll make it so much
quicker and easier to cream with the sugar. A quick tip a learnt recently if your butter
is cold, fill a mug with boiling water, tip it out and place it over the top of the butter.
After about 5 minutes it should be perfectly soft.
To the butter measure out half a cup or 100g of sugar. You’ll notice I give the recipe
amounts in cups and gram so no matter where you live in the world you should find this
recipe easy enough to follow. If you would like the full recipe for these chocolate afghan
biscuits it will be on my website as well as the full measurements listed in the description
box below.
Use a hand mixer, a stand mixer or a whisk to cream the butter and sugar together until
light and fluffy.
Afghans are a major classic here in New Zealand. It’ll be hard to find any kiwi kid who hasn’t
baked these at one point or another. It’s thought they were created around the 1930s
and there’s not much information about where the name came from but some say it’s because
they resembled the afghanistan landscape. A bit of an odd choice.
Scrape down the bowl a couple time to make sure everything is being creamed together
well. This is the texture you’re looking for, light, fluffy and almost doubled in volume.
Once you butter and sugar have been creamed together we’re going to add the dry ingredients.
Measure out 1 and a 1/4 cups or 160g of standard all purpose flour along with a 1/4 cup of
a good quality unsweetened cocoa powder.
If your cocoa powder is a little lumpy, as it does sometimes tend to be make sure to
use a sieve to remove any of the lumps. Use a wooden spoon or spatula to mix the dough
together until the dry ingredient have just about been incorporated. Make sure not to
over mix here as we still have another ingredient to add.
As you can see from the ingredients these biscuits slash cookies are pretty simple.
By the way if you are confused we call cookies biscuits here in NZ unless they’re the kind
of chewy chocolate chip ones then they’re cookies. The biscuit isn’t too sweet, but
they do get iced which turns them incredibly delicious.
These afghan biscuits will also keep pretty well for about 3 days in an airtight container.
You can easily halve or double the recipe depending on how many you would like to make
or make them half the size for a really small cookie.
Lastly it’s time for the star of the show, the corn flakes. We need 2 cups or about 60g.
Use your favourite brand or whatever you have in your pantry. Make sure these are just standard
type corn flakes, not frosted or with any extras.
Pour them into the bowl with the dough and use your wooden spoon to gently fold them
through. Try to be as careful as possible, not to break up all of the corn flakes too
much but of course some of them will as this mixture is pretty thick.
The cornflakes are what provide such a delicious crunch to these biscuits, which with the chocolate
just makes these so incredibly delicious.
When your dough has come together it’s time to bake these. Line a baking sheet with non
stick paper and make sure your oven is preheated.
The easiest way to portion out the cookies is with a cookie scoop, it’s one of my favourite
kitchen tools but if you don’t have one just a spoon will work too.
You want the chocolate afghans to be about two tablespoons in size, if you are using
a regular spoon, just roll them in your hands to form a ball. Set them on the tray, spacing
them apart so they have room to spread a little.
Use the back of a spoon to press each of the biscuits down. They do spread a little in
the oven but this just gives them a bit of a head start.
Bake the chocolate afghans in a 180 C or 350F oven for 15 to 20 minutes. Let them cool on
the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely before icing.
When you are ready to ice the chocolate afghans in a medium sized mixing bowl add in the room
temperature butter.
This is such a simple and easy icing recipe, no need to for hand mixer or a stand mixer
and it only takes about a minute to whip up.
To the butter add in 1 cup or 125g of icing sugar. Icing sugar is the exact same ingredients
as confectioners sugar and powdered sugar, these are just different names in different
parts of the world.
This icing or frosting is a really great recipe for when you want to whip something up super
quick. It isn’t as decadent as chocolate buttercream but buttercream will take you
at least 5-6 minutes to whip up and requires so much butter. This is great for chocolate
afghans or bars or slices.
A few tablespoons of cocoa powder for that delicious chocolate flavour and of course
a pinch of salt to round out the flavours.
Lastly we’ll need between one and two tablespoons of really hot water . Make sure your water
is pretty hot here as it will help to melt the butter and combine the icing together.
pour it into the mixing bowl and use a whisk to combine the ingredients together. You want
this to be pretty thick but if it does need it, a small amount more water can be added.
Make sure to add it slowly though as you can always add more but you don’t want to be
caught in trap of more water, more icing sugar, more water.
To ice the afghans take a biscuit and add a few tablespoons of the icing, using a spoon
to spread it out a little.
Lastly add a half walnut.
I hope you try out these chocolate afghans, they’re so delicious and such a classic
here! Thank you so much for watching and I will see you in my next video.