A tip before starting to prepare our treats: if the room temperature is high, I recommend using cold milk, butter, and chocolate from the fridge.

Chop the dark chocolate into coarse flakes (or use dark chocolate chips).

Cut the cold butter from the fridge into small pieces.

Prepare the spices you will use to flavor our pastries (grated citrus peel, cinnamon, vanilla, and so on). If you wish to add liquor, its weight must be deducted from the milk; for example, if I decide to add 5 milliliters of liquor, I will add only 105 milliliters of milk instead of 110 as required by the recipe.

Preheat the oven to 356°F

In a large bowl, or in that of a mixer, sift the flour and baking powder together, add the salt, small pieces of butter, any powdered spices (no liquids at this stage), sugar, and chocolate.

Briefly knead to obtain a coarse crumb mixture.

Now add the milk (and any liquor) which we will pour little by little, as flours do not always absorb the same amount of liquids; in fact, to avoid ending up with a dough that is too mushy and unmanageable or, on the contrary, too hard, it might be necessary to add a bit less or more milk than the amount I indicated.

Mix until you get a firm dough that we will compact with our hands; the dough will appear quite disconnected.

Then turn it onto the lightly floured table and knead it a little longer, until you obtain a compact dough, thanks to the butter which will start to become soft and act as a binder. The final consistency should be that of shortcrust pastry.

Roll out the dough with a rolling pin, giving it a thickness of one finger. Using a cookie cutter (or a pastry cutter or a small glass) with a diameter of 1.5 inches, cut out your pastries until the dough is used up, re-kneading whenever necessary to cut more pastries.
Place them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, spacing them one finger apart.

Bake them in the hot oven for about 20/22 minutes, on the middle rack. The pastries are ready when the base has turned golden and they feel firm to the touch. Take them out immediately and let them cool before dusting them with powdered sugar.

The extra idea. Chocolate pastries can be covered with sugar glaze, chocolate, royal icing, or nut paste.

We can also enrich the dough with whole or chopped nuts, such as peanuts, cashews, almonds, pistachios, walnuts; or with dried fruits like dried figs, candied ginger, chopped pitted dates, apricots, etc.

Bon appetit.