Cottage cheese biscuits

Whenever Mum stays with us, I ask her to cook something special for me. She did cook pirozhki twice (with mashed potatoes and wild mushrooms, as well as cabbage with egg and dill), and aubergine ikra (a Russian caponata). She also promised to make some cottage cheese pastries but got too busy and never made them.
I bought a pack of Polish cottage cheese, and it was getting too close to expiry date. Rather than make pastries, I decided to bake a batch of soft biscuits.
This is not an authentic Russian recipe, but the first stage of making dough from cottage cheese is (before adding all the extra bits and bobs, lurking in kitchen cupboards).
I didn't have enough sugar left, so to sweeten the biscuits I used the remaining 2tsp of salted caramel and also white hot chocolate/raspberry ripple, which we recently bought in Whittard's.
Eddie loves that shop and got easily persuaded that he liked the flavour of the hot chocolate when he sampled it in the shop. When I made it for him at home, he said it was too pink to his liking. Sigh.
Thus I thought I'd try to add it to bakes, as I didn't quite fancy pink hot chocolate either (due to a very sweet taste rather than colour).

Cottage cheese biscuits
Ingredients:
250g cottage cheese (I used half fat)
250g self-raising flour
150g margarine (Flora)
a pinch of salt
1tsp vanilla paste
1 medium egg
50g caster sugar
2tsp salted caramel (optional)
4tbsp white hot chocolate (optional)
1tbsp cocoa powder
Vimto-flavoured Millions (optional) and/or almonds

In a big mixing bowl mash cottage cheese with a fork, sift in the flour and add margarine, mix well. Add salt, vanilla, beat in egg, and mix in salted caramel and hot chocolate powder. Dip hands into flour and then pinch walnut-sized pieces of cookie dough, roll and flatten them slightly, and place them on a parchment paper in a baking tray.
Use Vimto-flavoured Millions (found in the latest Degustabox) to decorate the biscuits.
Bake for about 12-15 minutes at 180C.
After the first tray went in, I decided to add 1tsbp of "normal" cocoa to the dough. so the second batch were dark in colour with almonds on top.
They will be still very soft, when you take the tray out. Transfer them carefully on a cooling rack.
Eat warm or cold.

The biscuits are rather squishy. They were not overly sweet. If you have a sweet tooth, add more sugar to the dough.

Since I used all sorts of bits and bobs in this recipe, plus cottage cheese near its sell-by-date, this recipe is a good candidate for #KitchenClearout linky hosted by Cheryl at Madhouse Family Reviews.