A few months ago I was at my friend Alice’s house. She asked me if I’d ever tried the oaty biscuits from IKEA. I hadn’t. I had a feeling that my life was about to change in some way. She kindly popped into her kitchen and came back with a hall-of-fame-worthy biscuit. If you haven’t tried them, these ‘KAFFEREP’ fellas are a good time: two crispy crunchy oat biscuits sandwiched with dark chocolate. A bit like a double backwards hobnob – totally magic.
I threw a recipe together and fell in love with the ultra crispy results. These featured in Kitchen Projects #11, and you can read more about the science of the recipe and the behind-the-scenes recipe development here.
Makes: 18-24 x 6cm biscuits or 12-14 x 8cm biscuits
Prep time: 30 minutes, plus 20 minutes chilling
Cook time: 10 minutes
Photography & styling: Safia Shakarchi
Season: Year-round
Ingredients
150g oats
100g plain flour
3g bicarbonate of soda
3g salt
50g light brown sugar
85g unsalted butter, cold and cubed up
85g unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
4g malt vinegar
150-175g dark chocolate
Method
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First, get your butter melted. You want it to be a little cooled down.
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Mix together all the dry ingredients in a bowl. Rub the cold cubed butter into the dry ingredients.
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Once the melted butter has cooled down, add in the malt vinegar. Now pour the butter/vinegar mix into the dry ingredients and mix together to form a dough.
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Squash the biscuit dough in between two sheets of greaseproof and roll it out to about 2mm-3mm. You want it to be quite thin as you will be sandwiching them together later and so 2 biscuits actually = 1 biscuit in this case.
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Let the biscuit dough chill for about 20 mins in the fridge. You want it to be pliable but chilled.
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Cut the biscuits and place on a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper. I use a 6cm fluted cutter, and they will weigh around 10g each. You can squash all of the offcuts together and re-roll ad infinitum!
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Bake at 195°C/175°C fan/gas mark 5 for around 10mins. If they aren’t golden by then, leave them in for 1 min longer at a time. Allow to cool completely before sandwiching with chocolate.
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As the biscuits are cooling down, melt your dark chocolate (see cook’s notes below). For these biscuits, I melted the choc over a bain-marie and then – off the heat – stirred for 20 mins until thick and cool. You do want to wait around for it to be a bit thickened so it doesn’t spread too far when you sandwich the cookies.
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Put a teaspoon (ish) of cooling chocolate onto the biscuit – you can spread it a little bit to the edges to encourage the chocolate to ‘squish’ out the edges when you sandwich them. If the chocolate doesn’t splurge out the edges a bit, add a bit more chocolate!
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Now leave to set and chill. I put mine in the fridge because I am impatient. You now officially win 3pm. Keep your biscuits in an airtight container for 5 days.
Read more: Kitchen Projects
The most moreish biscuits ever? Well even more where that came from. These are one of the failsafe recipes from Nicola’s newsletter Kitchen Projects. Sign up for weekly recipes in your inbox, or subscribe for KP+ for an additional dose of insider pastry chef knowledge.
— cook’s notes
For this recipe I don’t think you need to fully temper your choc – the middle of the biscuit actually retains a nice texture if it isn’t properly tempered. Please don’t tell any fancy chefs I said this as they will kill me.
— about the author
Crunchy. Oats. Chocolate. All boxes ticked. This makes me so happy, off to make them NOW!