Shiroi Koibito is one of Japan's most popular souvenir items. The name Shiroi Koibito translates to white lovers cookies, and it's made of white chocolate sandwiched between langue de chat biscuits - the crispy butter biscuits you may know as cat tongue or lidah kucing locally! The most popular Shiro Koibito is manufactured by the Ishiya company (you'll probably recognise the white and blue box, the french description 'chocolate blanc et langue de chat', and the individual green packets with the snow crystal design). While the company is based in Hokkaido, the biscuits have become well-loved all throughout Japan. Unfortunately, Ishiya's Shiroi Koibito is said to non-halal as it uses animal-derived shortening for the biscuits ☹️ But don't worry, it's actually quite easy to make halal chocolate blanc et langue de chat yourselves right at home with our easy halal shiroi koibito recipe!
Ingredients (makes about 30 sandwich cookies)
- 100g butter, softened
- 100g cake flour
- 1 egg
- 60g granulated sugar (or icing sugar works too!)
- 2 tsp vanilla essence (or 1 tsp alcohol-free pure vanilla)
- 250g white chocolate, chopped
Directions
- In a medium bowl, add the softened butter and sugar. Whisk together until well combined.
- Add the egg and whisk in thoroughly.
- Sift in the cake flour and whisk until thoroughly combined.
- Place a pastry bag or ziplock bag in a jar or glass. Scoop the batter into the bag.
- Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
- Snip the corner of your pastry or ziplock bag. On a baking sheet lined with baking paper, pipe out the batter into squares measuring 4 x 4 cm (see notes below for some tips!).
- Bake for 8 - 10 minutes, until edges turn golden brown. Let cool on the tray completely.
- Bring some water to a boil in a pot and turn down the heat to let it gently simmer. Place a heatproof bowl on the pot (making sure the bottom doesn't touch the water), and add the chopped white chocolate. Let it melt, stirring so it melts evenly.
- Transfer the melted chocolate onto a small baking sheet lined with aluminium foil - smoothen it out into an even layer. Place the tray in the freezer so it hardens up slightly (enough so you can cut it easily - but not frozen solid as the chocolate will crack into pieces when you cut it!
- Once the chocolate is hardened slightly, trim the edges and cut into 4 x 4 cm square pieces (enough for all your sandwich cookies). Sandwich each piece between 2 langue de chat biscuits. Place the sandwiched cookies in the freezer to harden up completely before serving.
Notes:
- If you're not confident about piping out the biscuit batter into nice squares, trace out a template of squares on a piece of paper and place that on the baking tray before placing the baking sheet on it. Use the templates to help guide you as you squeeze the batter on the baking sheet. Once you've piped all the squares, remove the template paper from underneath the baking paper before baking.
- If you can't be bothered with pouring your melted white chocolate into a baking sheet to form nice squares, you could also always just directly spread the cooled melted chocolate on a biscuit before sandwiching it with another one - you won't get the nice square edges like the actual Ishiya shiroi koibito, but it'll still be delicious! You'll probably also end up using less chocolate per sandwich.
- If you don't have a small baking sheet, you can also use an 8-inch square baking pan to make your white chocolate layer - you may have to do it in batches to get all the white chocolate squares you need for your biscuits.
Making these delightful cookies are a pretty easy process, and you can't beat that delicious combination of crispy buttery cookie and white chocolate! Plus, now that you know how to make it, you can customise it to use whatever type of chocolate you like too ?