TRIPLE choco-cookies
05 Dec 2010 1 Comment
Chocolate chips cookies in my house just got better! The only improvement would be if I make them quadruple chocolate chip! I don’t normally add cocoa powder into the batter but my son had been asking for dark cookies so just for him, I did!
This is just a variation on one of the recipes I normally use but somehow it came out nicer than ever. This is the recipe I used as a guideline but tweaked it somewhat so the new ingredients were:
- 100g softened butter or margarine
- 125g caster or granulated sugar (I had run out of brown sugar)
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla flavouring
- 140g sifted plain flour
- 2 tablespoons/10g sifted cocoa powder
- 1/2 tsp salt (if your butter is salted already use only 1/4tsp)
- 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 75g milk chocolate chips
- 75g chopped white chocolate
I followed the recipe as in the link given above and baked at 350F/180C/Gas 4.
Ladyfingers/Savoiardi for Tiramisù
23 Oct 2010 4 Comments
I had a special request for Tiramisù yesterday but no ladyfinger biscuits to go in a it. I remembered seeing a recipe online for homemade biscuits so decided to give it a bash.
They were very quick and easy to make and the results were delicious. I was slightly disappointed to have make a Tiramisù with them as I could have happily sat down with a cup of tea and just eaten the biscuits as they were.
They did turn out a little flat compared to shop bought ladyfingers but I read a tip suggesting that the egg yolk be beaten to a thick foam before folding into the beaten egg white. I shall try this tip next time.
LADYFINGERS/ SAVOIARDI BISCUITS
(Source: Recipe from Cordon Bleu At Home)
This recipe makes approximately 24 big ladyfingers or 45 small (2 1/2″ to 3″ long) ladyfingers.
Ingredients:
3 eggs, separated
6 tablespoons /75gms granulated sugar
3/4 cup/95gms cake flour, sifted (or 3/4 cup all purpose flour + 2 tbsp corn starch)
6 tablespoons /50gms confectioner’s sugar,
Method:
Preheat your oven to 350 F (175 C) degrees, then lightly brush 2 baking sheets with oil or softened butter and line with parchment paper.
Beat the egg whites using a hand held electric mixer until stiff peaks form. Gradually add granulate sugar and continue beating until the egg whites become stiff again, glossy and smooth.
In a small bowl, beat the egg yolks lightly with a fork and fold them into the meringue, using a wooden spoon. Sift the flour over this mixture and fold gently until just mixed. It is important to fold very gently and not overdo the folding. Otherwise the batter would deflate and lose volume resulting in ladyfingers which are flat and not spongy.
Fit a pastry bag with a plain tip (or just snip the end off; you could also use a Ziploc bag) and fill with the batter. Pipe the batter into 5″ long and 3/4″ wide strips leaving about 1″ space in between the strips.
Sprinkle half the confectioner’s sugar over the ladyfingers and wait for 5 minutes. The sugar will pearl or look wet and glisten. Now sprinkle the remaining sugar. This helps to give the ladyfingers their characteristic crispness.
Hold the parchment paper in place with your thumb and lift one side of the baking sheet and gently tap it on the work surface to remove excess sprinkled sugar.
Bake the ladyfingers for 10 minutes, then rotate the sheets and bake for another 5 minutes or so until the puff up, turn lightly golden brown and are still soft.
Allow them to cool slightly on the sheets for about 5 minutes and then remove the ladyfingers from the baking sheet with a metal spatula while still hot, and cool on a rack.
Store them in an airtight container till required. They should keep for 2 to 3 weeks.
Brownie cookies
20 Oct 2010 Leave a Comment
in Chocolate, Cookies, Desserts
If you take a peek at previous posts you’ll notice that the kids and I love brownies and we love cookies so… imagine my delight when I found a recipe that combined the two! The recipe calls for a package of boxed brownie mix to which you add extra flour, eggs and margarine before refrigerating and then baking. The resulting cookies are delicious – like cookies on the outside and soft, rich and brownie-like on the inside. For the original recipe, click here.
- 1 package fudge brownie mix (I used Betty Crocker)
- 1 1/4 cup all purpose flour
- 1/4 cup packed brown sugar (I ran out so I used white sugar)
- 2 eggs
- 1 stick butter/margarine, melted, cooled (113g)
- 2-3 tablespoons cold water
- 1 cup dark chocolate chunks (I used Hershey’s milk chocolate chips)
- Mix together the flour, brownie mix, chocolate chunks/chips and sugar.
- Stir in eggs one at a time, followed by the butter and 2 tablespoons water. If the batter appears too dry, add 1 more tablespoon of water. Batter will be very thick.
- Cover and refrigerate for 2 hours.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Grease a cookie sheet.
- Drop heaped tablespoons of dough onto the cookie sheet, you want pretty thick cookies here to get the brownie feel, about 3 inches apart. Press down slightly. Don’t flatten completely. Bake for 8-10 minutes.
- Remove from oven, allow to cool 2 minutes on cookie sheet. Transfer to cooling rack to cool completely.
More cookies – Alton Brown’s
24 Apr 2010 10 Comments
in Chocolate, Cookies Tags: Alton Brown, Baking, Chocolate, Cookies, Recipes
As I mentioned in my previous chocolate chip cookie post, I am on a quest to fnd THE perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe… Today’s cookie recipe is called ‘The Chewy’ and is from a chap called Alton Brown. I have no idea who this guy is… but I’m guessing he must be American. Since the recipe seems to be getting rave reviews all over the internet I thought it deserved a try!
What’s different about this recipe is that you melt the butter before creaming in the sugar and the recipe calls for 1 egg plus one extra egg yolk. What to do with the leftover egg white? Don’t throw it down the sink, freeze it! You can save up a few egg whites in the freezer this way and keep them for when you want to make meringue or some other recipe requiring only egg whites. I have found that they still whip up pretty well after freezing.
The dough also needs to be refrigerated for some time before baking. The recipe doesn’t specify how long so I baked a dozen after 1 hour in the fridge and saved the rest of the dough for later… the second batch got about 5 hours in the fridge before being baked.
Both batches turn out well, the cookies didn’t burn around the edges, the taste was pretty similar to the Barbie cookies. I think the only difference really was that this dough didn’t spread out so much so the cookies remained quite thick – slightly cakey in the middle like the Barbie ones but again, I wouldn’t describe them as chewy.
Some commenters on this recipe complained that they were getting greasy cookies but I didn’t come across this problem. In all, a good recipe with tasty results. Thumbs up!
Recipe from the foodnetwork website:
Ingredients:
Directions
Heat oven to 375 degrees F.
Melt the butter in a heavy-bottom medium saucepan over low heat. Sift together the flour, salt, and baking soda and set aside.
Pour the melted butter in the mixer’s work bowl. Add the sugar and brown sugar. Cream the butter and sugars on medium speed. Add the egg, yolk, 2 tablespoons milk and vanilla extract and mix until well combined. Slowly incorporate the flour mixture until thoroughly combined. Stir in the chocolate chips.
Chill the dough, then scoop onto parchment-lined baking sheets, 6 cookies per sheet. Bake for 14 minutes or until golden brown, checking the cookies after 5 minutes. Rotate the baking sheet for even browning. Cool completely and store in an airtight container.
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Chocolate Chip Cookies
12 Apr 2010 6 Comments
in Chocolate, Cookies Tags: Baking, Chocolate, Cookies, Recipes
The kids and I love, love, love chocolate chip cookies so this post will hopefully be the first of several on this subject as I go on a quest to find the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe! I like cookies when they are moist and slightly chewy inside. Some recipes I have used in the past have been too brittle or too doughy tasting. The following recipe is the one we use most often and I shall admit to you that this recipe is brought to you from the DK Barbie Cookbook. 
My older daughters make these cookies sometimes too. It’s a nice recipe and the cookies are great when fresh although a bit too crisp by the following day… this is generally not a problem for us though as the cookies are normally all swiped off the tray within minutes! Sometimes, I will make the dough, bake half and keep the other half in the refrigerator for later so we can have fresh cookies again later in the day or the following day.
For the chocolate chips, I really play around with this part. I have used any of the following and they have been delicious every time: dark chocolate chips (or chopped dark chocolate), milk chocolate chips (or chopped milk chocolate), mixture of dark and white chocolate chips/chopped chocolate, smashed up big bag of Maltesers, M&M’s, chopped up Toblerone… you can really use anything that takes your fancy. I have to say though that the Toblerone cookies and Malteser cookies are particularly fabulous. 
These cookies bake quite evenly, that is to say they don’t go dark around the edges before the centre is cooked. They are soft, ever so slightly cakey on the inside but not chewy. We’ve been using this recipe ever since one of my girls brought the DK Barbie Cook Book home from the school library a year or two ago so the recipe gets a big thumbs up from us.
Ingredients
- 100g softened butter or margarine
- 50g caster or granulated sugar
- 75g brown sugar (this sugar gives the cookies a better texture and flavour)
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla flavouring
- 150g sifted plain flour
- 1/2 tsp salt (if your butter is salted already use only 1/4tsp)
- 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 15og chocolate chips
Directions
Cream the butter and sugars together then add the egg and vanilla and beat well.
Add the flour, salt and bicarb and mix until blended before finally adding the chocolate. Make sure the chocolate is evenly distributed before placing tablespoonfuls of the mixture onto greased baking trays.
Bake at 350F/180C/Gas4 for 12-15mins (until golden).
Allow to cool slightly before removing from trays.
For us, a tall glass of cold milk always accompanies a couple of these chocolate chip cookies.
Yield: 12 large cookies or around 20 regular sized cookies.
Coloured sugar
07 Apr 2010 7 Comments
in Cakes, Cookies, Icing and Decorating Tags: Cake Decorating, Recipes, Wilton
Coloured sugar… what a simple and easy to make at home decoration for cookies and cupcakes! I never thought of colouring sugar until I was browsing some websites and stumbled across the Wilton homebaking and cake decorating website where there was mention of decorating Spritz cookies (which I have also never heard of until now!) with coloured sugar. I learned how easy this is to make after a quick internet search and now have 5 bowls of coloured sugar ready to use in decoration! I did go a bit overboard in the excitement!
All you need is a thick plastic food bag, sugar (say 1 cup) and food colouring. The small dropper vials of food colourings are best because it is easier to regulate the amount of colouring that you use and it can be measured drop by drop.
For candy pink sugar, place 1 cup of sugar into the bag, add 3 drops of red food colouring and then keep scrunching the bag and moving the sugar around the bag until you see that the colour has been evenly distributed and you have evenly tinted sugar. Pour into a bowl and leave overnight to dry. When you come back to the sugar break up with a spoon if it has stuck together a little. Transfer to storing jars or bags and use it in any of your cookie or muffin decorating.
Millionaires Shortbread
05 Apr 2010 9 Comments
in Chocolate, Cookies Tags: Baking, Chocolate, Cookies, Recipes, sweets
Millionaires Shortbread is an old favourite of mine and the children; something we haven’t had in a while so I decided to treat the kids and make them some. I managed to get some condensed milk on special offer so I had the perfect opportunity! It is made up of a crumbly shortbread base, a squidgey caramel filling and a milk chocolate topping.
Shortbread base
175g/6oz room softened butter
250g/9oz plain flour (I used Italian 00)
75g/3oz caster or granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
Directions
Grease a 12x8cm baking tin.
Place all ingredients into a food processor and blit until the dough forms a ball.
Turn out into baking tray and press down well into the tray including the edges and corners of the trays.
Bake at 350F/180C/Gas4 for around 20 mins.
Caramel layer
2x 396g tins condensed milk
90g/3 1/2oz soft brown sugar
90g/3 1/2oz butter
Directions
Place all 3 ingredients into a pan over a medium heat, stirring constantly. Heat until thick and fudgey.
Allow to cool for 5 minutes and then pour over the shortbread base. Allow to cool in the fridge.
Chocolate topping
1 bag Hersheys milk chocolate chips (300g)
Melt chocolate and then pour over the top of the cooled caramel topping. (I used 1 bag of Hersheys chocolate chips and about 100ml whipping and melted them together so that the chocolate would be easier to cut and less brittle) Return to fridge until chocolate is hardened.
Cut into small bitesize squares or bars.
Martha Stewart’s Chocolate Crackle Cookies
31 Mar 2010 2 Comments
in Chocolate, Cookies, Desserts, Recipe review Tags: Baking, Chocolate, Cookies, Martha Stewart, Recipes
The kids and I really love chocolate chip cookies but it does get boring making the same thing time and time again even if I do try different recipes on the same theme. I’ve been experimenting a bit lately with chocolate chip cookie recipes in a quest to find ‘the’ perfect recipe however I felt the need for a change today. The only requirement was that it had to contain chocolate.
I found this recipe on the Martha Stewart website and the method (whipping the ingredients) looked intriguing so I decided to go for it. The yield of 48 cookies was good considering the amount of all the ingredients – I normally use around that amount of chocolate and get only 2 dozen cookies. The dough was delicious even before being baked- it had a wonderful truffle texture and rich chocolate taste. Looking at the dough, you would never imagine how light the cookies would become after baking; not heavy at all. They looked quite unassuming on the tray going into the oven but transformed in those short 12 minutes baking time. Lightly crispy on the outside, soft on the inside.
Recipe verbatim from the Martha Stewart website:
Ingredients
Makes about 4 dozen
- 8 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped (I used half dark chocolate and half milk chocolate)
- 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup Dutch-process cocoa powder
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1 1/3 cups packed light-brown sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1/3 cup milk
- 1 cup confectioners’ sugar, plus more for rolling (I used 1 cup caster sugar and about 1/2 cup icing sugar. First dipped them in the caster sugar and made the shape more precise then quickly coated in the icing sugar)
- Melt chocolate in a heat-proof bowl, or the top of a double boiler, over a pan of simmering water. Set aside to cool. Into a small bowl, sift together flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt.
- In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter and light-brown sugar until light and fluffy, 3 to 4 minutes. Add eggs and vanilla, and beat until well combined. Add melted chocolate. Add dry ingredients alternately with milk. Mix on low speed until just combined. Divide dough into quarters, wrap with plastic wrap, and chill in the refrigerator until firm, about 2 hours.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper; set aside. On a surface dusted with confectioners’ sugar, use your hands to roll each portion of dough into a log 16 inches in length and about 1 inch in diameter. Wrap logs in plastic wrap, and transfer to a baking sheet. Chill for 30 minutes. Cut each log into 1-inch pieces, and toss pieces in confectioners’ sugar, a few at a time. Using your hands, roll the pieces into balls. If any of the cocoa-colored dough is visible, roll dough in confectioners’ sugar again to coat completely. Place cookies on prepared baking sheets 2 inches apart. Bake until cookies have flattened and sugar splits, 12 to 15 minutes.
Transfer to a wire rack, and let cool completely. Store in an airtight container for up to 1 week.
I used 100g of Nestle Gold Noir 70% de Cacao and 100g of Hershey milk chocolate chips – I didn’t want the cookies to be too rich for the children>>
I beat the mixture with a handheld electric whisk and you can see here how truffley the mixture became>>
Coated in sugar and icing sugar ready for the oven. At step 2 and 3 I didn’t bother to roll into logs, I just put the bowl of dough into the fridge for an hour or so and then used a teaspoon to scoop heaped teaspoon sized amounts into a bowl of caster sugar and shaped into flat rounds and then coated in icing sugar. The caster sugar helped to make the exterior a little crunchier. I wasn’t too exact about coating them, a quick dip in the icing sugar was enough. I got exactly 48 from my mixture. I didn’t refrigerate a second time before baking – I was too impatient!
Beautifully crackled and ready to eat. 9 year old compares them to brownie cookies. A bit more effort than usual but so worth it!
Ghribiya
14 Feb 2010 1 Comment
in Algerian, Cookies Tags: Algerian, Arabic, Cookies, Recipes
Ghribiya are light shortbread cookies with a single almond pressed into the centre before baking. A very simple and easy recipe.
Ingredients
5 cups all purpose flour
1 cup icing sugar
1.5 cups melted butter or margarine
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence (optional)
whole almonds
Method
Combine all the ingredients (except the almonds) together in a large bowl. Between your hands, roll balls the size of a large walnut and place onto lightly greased baking trays. Push a whole almond into the top of each cookies, it doesn’t matter if the cookie cracks, in fact they look a little more attractive when cracked. Bake at gas 4/180C/350F for 15-20 mins. Don’t allow the cookies to brown, they are traditionally enjoyed pale.
M’barja
14 Feb 2010 Leave a Comment
in Algerian, Breakfast, Cookies Tags: Algerian, Cookies, Recipes
If you are at all familiar with Arabic cooking then you have probably heard of Ma’amoul and Maqrout. Both are types of cookie with a soft date centre. Ma’amoul is normally made with flour or flour with a small amount of semolina and of course butter. The dough is pushed into attractive moulds, the filling added and then more dough pressed in before finally dispatching the moulded dough onto the baking sheet and baking.
Similarly maqrout is made from semolina (sometimes with a small amount of flour added) and has a date or nut filling, a wooden device is used to make a pattern on the top and the maqrout are baked before being drenched in honey.
The recipe below is for an Algerian variation called M’barja or M’thaqaba. Maqrout are common in Algeria but this variation seems to be quite unique to Algeria. It is cooked on a hotplate and is eaten dry, not drenched in honey or syrup.
M’barja contains a date filling and M’thaqaba is the semolina cookie without filling.
You need:
4 cups coarse semolina
pinch salt
1 cup melted butter or margarine
1 cup orange flower water/water combination (3 tablespoons orange flower topped up with water)
soft pitted date mixture – you can buy this ready mashed
To make:
Pour the melted butter into the semolina and salt and rub in well.
Pour the water in and mix well with hands to obtain a crumbly texture. The dough will still be a little dry but if you squeeze hard you make the dough stick together.
Turn out onto the worktop and press down with your hands. Roll out with a rolling pin or your hands to about 1/2 centimetre thickness.
Cut the dough in half.
Take a handful of the soft mashed date and squeeze it with your hands to make it fairly thin. Mine was very soft so I was able to do this and then place on one half of the semolina dough and using a wet knife I spread the date completely across one half.
Using a palette knife lift up pieces of the other half of the semolina dough and piece together on top of the date layer. You should end up with something quite messy as below:
With wet hands carefully push together the edges to seal so there is one complete layer over the date with no holes.
Cut into diamonds and place on hotplate which is set over a medium heat.
Cook on each side until golden.
Traditionally eaten with morning or mid-afternoon coffee.
Cuisine à 4 Mains (French)
Recent Comments