Matcha Chocolate-Topped Biscuits Recipe (Matcha Petit Ecolier / Matcha Choco Leibniz)

My matcha chocolate-topped biscuits recipe is inspired by a really boring but vivid dream I had about chocolate biscuits.

I absolutely love chocolate-topped biscuits. Bahlsen's Choco Leibniz is widely-found in supermarkets across the UK, along with LU's version, Petit Ecolier, in some specialist shops. Apparently, I love both them and matcha enough for them to both invade my subconscious. Because I had a super clear dream about Marks and Spencer stocking matcha versions of these biscuits and being super excited.

Interestingly, when I had this dream, M&S didn't even stock either brand of existing chocolate biscuits, let alone matcha ones – but soon after they did start producing their own-brand version of chocolate topped biscuits. Most mundane premonition ever.

I was recently reminded of this dream when I found a Silikomart kit online that lets you make Chocol Leibniz / Petit Ecolier at home. It's not the best kit in the world. The recipe that comes with it both makes a crazy amount of biscuits and a tiny amount of chocolate. I made the equivalent of 60% of both the dough (with my own vanilla dough recipe rather than their chocolate dough one) and chocolate recipe provided in the booklet, and found that the chocolate was only enough to cover half the biscuits – so for this recipe, I've doubled the amount of chocolate needed so you won't run out.

The recipe also doesn't mention tempering the chocolate, which is an essential step for making sure the chocolate actually sets after melting and might trip up inexperienced bakers. The cutter's a bit awkward to use and the chocolate mould only lets you make six chocolate toppers a pop, making it annoying to keep chocolate tempered for long enough to make several batches. But using my own recipe and quantities, I got around it.

You can get these 'Silikomart Cookie Choc' chocolate biscuit kits in a few different patterns, but I went for the heart-shaped one. Because it is nearly Valentine's Day, after all. Might as well make some Valentine's Day cookies for myself, since apparently my heart is yearning for matcha chocolate biscuits.

You can also watch me make these on my YouTube channel:

Ready? Let's go.

(Makes about 24 biscuits.)

Ingredients for Biscuits:

170g cold unsalted butter
280g plain flour
115g caster sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla
Pinch of salt

Ingredients for Chocolate Toppers:

300g white chocolate
2 tbsp matcha

Method:

1. In a large bowl, rub the butter, flour and sugar together with your fingertips until it resembles breadcrumbs in texture.

2.  Stir in the egg, vanilla and salt, switching to your hands when the dough starts to come together and lightly kneading until smooth.

3. Wrap the dough in clingfilm and chill for an hour to firm it up a little (but no longer, or it'll go rock-solid). If you do chill it for a few more hours, make sure you take it out of the fridge to soften a little for half an hour.

4. Preheat the oven to 180°C, and line some baking trays with nonstick baking paper.

5. Flour your work surface and rolling pin. Roll the dough out until it's about the thickness of a £1 coin.

6. Cut out the biscuits with the cutter, re-rolling scraps of dough and continuing to cut until there's no dough left. Place them on your prepared baking tray and bake for 10–15 minutes, or until just going golden around the edges. Cool completely. You may have a few domed/bubbly biscuits from the final few re-rolled batches where air bubbles got trapped in the dough – just set these aside for snacking, as uneven surfaces aren't great for sticking the chocolate toppers on later.

7. To make the chocolate toppers, add about half of the white chocolate and all of the matcha to a heatproof bowl sitting over a pan of just-simmering water. Make sure the bottom of the bowl isn't touching the water. Stir gently, and take off the heat when about halfway melted. Continue to stir until the rest of the chocolate has melted, scraping down the sides of the bowl as you go, and gradually add the rest of the chocolate bit by bit, each time stirring until completely melted. Do this until no more chocolate will melt – so you may have a couple of blocks of unused white chocolate left over. You've now tempered your matcha chocolate.

8. Use a teaspoon to carefully fill the silicone chocolate topper moulds, tapping the mould on the counter to help the melted chocolate fill all the spaces. Pop in the freezer to set quickly for two minutes, then pop out of the moulds. Use a little extra melted chocolate to stick them to your biscuits. Repeat until all the chocolate's used up.

Tip: You may need to put the bowl of melted matcha chocolate back on the pan of boiling water for a few seconds to loosen it up again between batches. Tempered chocolate will set by itself at room temperature. But don't leave it on the heat for too long, or it'll get too warm and go out of temper again.

Enjoy, and have fun.