Lemon Black Pepper Chocolate Butterflies

Sometimes, ideas for flavour combinations just come to me spontaneously. This weekend, I felt like lemon, dark chocolate and black pepper. So I took a basic cookie recipe and adapted it. These little cookies are a velvety, sweet and spicy treat... butterflies in the stomach :-)

Recipe
(adapted from: Betty Bossi - Backen in der Weihnachtszeit)

150g butter, soft
100g sugar
1 pinch of salt
1 egg
1 lemon, grated zest
250g flour
a large pinch of black pepper
ca. 20-30g grated dark chocolate (I used 70%)

With an electric hand mixer, beat butter in a bowl until creamy. Then, add sugar, salt,black pepper, egg and lemon zest and beat until smooth and pale. Add flour and form a smooth dough. Add the grated chocolate and incorporate with your hands. Flatten the dough a bit, wrap in cling film and put in the refridgerator for at least 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Line two baking trays with parchment paper.

Roll out the dough (about 4mm thick) and cut out cookies. Put them onto your trays and put in the refridgerator for another 10 minutes before baking. Then, bake for about 8 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack.

For the icing, mix together about 150g icing sugar with 2.5 tablespoons of lemon juice and either spread the icing on your cookies with a pasrty brush or dip the surface of the cookies into the icing and let dry on a wire rack.

These cookies keep, in an airtight container, for about 2 weeks.