I don’t about you, but in my workplace, whenever a pack of Arnott’s assorted creams get opened, the Kingstons are the first to disappear. For those unfamiliar with these delights, Kingstons are coconut shortbreads sandwiched together with chocolate cream filling. It is this biscuit that inspired me to make the chocolate coconut bundt cake. It is also the earliest pairing I can recall of chocolate and coconut flavours.
The recipe comes from The Australian Women’s Weekly The Afternoon Tea Collection and, as always, is incredibly reliable. I know I will be using this ganache recipe to sandwich together biscuits in future; it is the simplest and tastiest I have come across so far. These ‘Coconut Chocolate Crunchies’ are far superior to the bought variety, just as Mel’s Monte Carlo biscuits easily out-shone the originals.
Ingredients:
Biscuits
- 125g butter, softened
- ¾ cup (165g) firmly pack brown sugar
- 1 tbs golden syrup or treacle
- 2 eggs
- 2 cups (300g) self raising flour
- ½ cup (80g) rolled oats
- 1 cup (45g) desiccated coconut
Ganache
- 185g milk eating chocolate
- 30g butter
Preheat you oven to 180 and line 2 – 4 trays with baking paper (if you have enough oven space to bake four trays at once, the recipe will fill four trays).
In a mixing bowl, beat together the butter, sugar and syrup until smooth and fluffy. Then beat in the eggs one at a time.
Now sift the flour over the butter mix and fold in the flour, along with the oats and coconut.
Roll heaped teaspoons of the batter and place on trays 4-5cm apart, for even cooking. Press down gently with a fork to imprint. I like to weigh my biscuits when I’m pairing them together so they are all a uniform size. Mine were 10g each.
Bake the biscuits for 10-12 minutes, until golden brown. You may need to rotate the trays if your oven brown unevenly.
Cool the biscuits on the tray for about 5 minutes, before lifting to cooling racks.
While they cool to room temperature, make the ganache by melting the chocolate (I used the microwave, the book recommends using the double-boiler method) until smooth and then stirring in the butter until the whole mix is smooth and creamy. The butter will melt with the heat of the chocolate.
When the biscuits are completely cool, sandwich them together with ganache. About half a heaped teaspoon is the right amount, but you will get a feel as you go along. This recipe makes about 35 whole biscuits; plenty to fill the office biscuit tin.
If you like the Arnott’s version, you’ll love these. Make them at your next opportunity, they are incredibly easy, tasty and popular. An all-round treat!
A Tale of Two Kitchens 
Looks like a great recipe! I would so love to try some. I love a good biscuit and this looks great.
Hello Alex,
I made these last night for my work colleagues today. I wasn’t sure how similar mine turned out compared to the Arnott’s version – it’s been forever since I’ve had those – but they were delicious, nonetheless.
The biscuits were scoffed; my colleagues loved them.
Some of the comments included:
‘Oh my goodness, these are so more-ish’ (said by a man with three in his hand, and that wasn’t his first visit to the biscuit jar), which was followed by a discussion on how many each person had eaten up until that point in the day.
‘I haven’t had one – though Kingston’s are my favourite biscuit – because I suspect that once I start I won’t be able to stop. I’m going to wait until late afternoon’ said another colleague, who doesn’t really like sweet things. Time passes. ‘Yep, exactly as I had thought! Now I’ll have to have another!’ said immediately after wiping the crumbs of the first off her mouth.
So thank you for a great recipe!
Sam