Fruit and Nut Shortbread

Fruit and Nut shortbread? I couldn't believe it.

When I saw pictures of these pretty shortbread cookies on the online food log, Tastespotting last week, I knew I had to rush home and get right down to it. I love shortbread and the thought of yummy, colourful fruit and crunchy, delicious nuts in the melt-in-your-mouth treats just fired my engines right up.

I read through the recipe from Tasty Kitchen and decided to experiment a little with the basic shortbread recipe on the site. I'd read columnist for The Guardian, Felicity Cloake's post about "How To Make Perfect Shortbread" some time back and was inspired to try some of the different techniques she explores in her quest for the best shortbread.

I tried four different mixes:

The first was the straight forward blend of butter, sugar and plain flour along with the fruit and nut, chopped roughly. It was delicious. Nice and short. I could have stopped right there but I was curious. If there was the perfect shortbread, I wanted to know how to make it. 

The second was a blend of plain flour and corn flour, butter, sugar and the fruit and nuts. The corn flour altered the texture of the cookie. It was crunchy still but it also melted in the mouth as I bit into it. I liked that it did and was quite pleased.

But wait. There was another recipe with rice flour.

The third mix combined plain flour with rice flour, salt sugar and the fruit and nuts. This time, the shortbread was a little more crispy and a tad grainy. Nice but I much preferred the corn flour version. However, I did like the generous pinch of salt from this recipe.

So, for the final batch, I incorporated the second and third mix: plain flour +corn flour, salt, sugar, butter and the fruit and nut. Perfect. 

Aside from me being curious and trying four different recipe, shortbread is actually the easiest cookie to make from scratch. Because the dough should not be handled much (to keep the lightness and shortness of it), there is very little time spend handling the dough. In fact, most recipes advise you not to roll the dough but rather pat it into shape or into a sheet before you cut it. 

Or, you could just shape it into a log and cut circles. Really rustic and rather cool.

Fruit and Nut Shortbread

200g plain flour

70g corn flour

1 tsp salt

200g butter

85g sugar

1/4 cup dried cranberries, chopped roughly

1/4 cup candied lemon or orange peel, chopped roughly

1/4 cup  pumpkin seeds, chopped roughly

1/4 cup  walnuts, chopped roughly

1/4 cup  sunflower seeds, chopped roughly

Whisk the flours and salt together. Set aside.

Cream the butter and sugar together till light and fluffy. Gently fold in the flours and the nuts and fruits and bring the dough together with your hands. 

Divide the dough in two and shape into logs. Wrap tightly in cling film and refrigerate overnight or for a couple of hours, at least.

Pre-heat the oven to 150. Cut the logs into 0.5 cm slices and lay them on a lined baking tray. Bake for 15 mins or until the sides just start to brown. Remove and cool. 

Punitions

Punition, in French, translates to punishment. The stort behind these sables are just too cute (and bewildering). Apparently, French baker Pierre Poliane's grandmother used to play a game with her grandchildren: they'd be out playing and she'd call them back, apparently to punish them for something or other and instead, she'd hand them a tray (or plate — the specifics are hazy) of these sables. Hence, they became known as punitions. Lucky fella, that Poliane! When we were kids, each time we'd get called in for a punishment, we'd get one. And without any cookies. 

Believe me, there are nothing punishing about these buttery cookies. They're simple, humble cookies but therein lies the beauty: crisp, light, only mildly sweet and wonderfully buttery.  

They're also really easy to put together. The cookies don't need any adornment (though they are sometimes used to sandwich a chocolate or cream filling) but I decided to play a little and try my hand at decorating them with some royal icing. 

Royal icing is quite simple to make: you can either use meringue powder or egg whites which you whisk together with icing sugar and water/lemon juice/vanilla. Then you colour the icing as you wish and pipe/spread the icing on the cookies as you wish.

I'd decided to make the icing on a whim. So I started whipping the egg whites (I didn't have meringue powder) before realising that I had barely any icing sugar left. (You need about 2 cups sugar per egg white to ice about a dozen cookies). Arrrgh. I had to make do but the result was a slightly thin icing which made piping it a nightmare. The damn thing kept running everywhere. 

Also, I am not comfortable with eating or serving raw egg whites and so I popped the iced cookies in the oven (low heat: about 150C) for about 10 mins for the icing to cook and become a kind of meringue. It was good, I must say!

Punitions


145g butter, unsalted
1/2 cup (heaped) castor sugar
1 egg
2 cups flour
1/4 cup (scant) corn flour


Beat the butter with the paddle attachment of your mixer until smooth. Add the sugar and beat till incorporated. Don't beat it too much that it gets fluffy as you would when baking cakes. Add the egg and mix until the mixture becomes smooth and satiny. Add the flour and corn starch mix just until the dough comes together. 


Divide the dough into two, shape into discs, wrap in clingfilm and chill for an hour or so. 


Preheat the oven to 180C.


Roll dough out to about 5mm thickness and cut it with your cookie cutter. Place on a line baking sheet (about 2cm apart) and bake for 8 mins or until the middle of the cookie is set but the punitions are still beautifully pale. The edges may turn golden a little if your cookies are a little on the thin side.


Cool and serve.

Florentines

When I was a school girl, my mother used to make me eat a handful of blanched almonds every day.  She’d read somewhere that almonds were brain food and obviously my lacklustre performance in school must have troubled her , hence the almonds.

Frankly, I hated them. Blanched almonds didn’t taste great. Plus, they were unseasoned. Not a grain of salt went on them. It was torture for me and, I am assuming, torture for my mother getting me to eat them. Sometimes, I’d tell her to pack them ... that I would eat them on my way to school and three days later she’d find them in my schoolbag, wrapped up in a piece of tissue, rotting. Well, not rotting but definitely past their prime.

Yes, I was a challenge to bring up.

After months of trying, mum gave up and she devised other ways of getting me to eat my daily dose of brain food. I must have been truly an under performer for her to go to such lengths. My favouritest of her almond concoctions was a steamed almond pudding that was only slightly sweet but nice and milky. Oh! I think she thanked the heavens when I professed my love for the custard and actually begged her to make it more often.

I don’t know if it improve my academic performance much or at all (unlike my brother who loved to learn, I found studying a chore) but it surely made me love almonds.

I never did get the recipe for the almond custard from my mum - this will be one of my many regrets - but I have found many other recipes with almonds that I love.

This recipe for Florentines is based on one from Ottolenghi, a restaurant in London. The original is flavoured with orange zest and coated in chocolate. I resisted the chocolate as I didn’t want to underwhelm the almonds. And, I omitted the zest as I didn’t have oranges in my kitchen. Still, the Florentines turned out good.

There is nothing complicated about making Florentines: ingredients are few and the process is simple. For such little effort, you get a crunchy, nutty treat that can be eaten at any time.

 

Florentines

1 egg white 

13/4 cup blanched sliced almonds

1/3 cup icing sugar

pinch of salt

drop of vanilla

Preheat the oven to 150C.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and lightly oil the paper.

Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl. Using a fork or a spoon, lift a portion of the mixture (about a tablespoon's worth) onto the baking sheet and spread it as thin as possible, keeping the almond slices close together.

Repeat, leaving about 1cm gap between each portion. 

Bake for 10-15 minutes or until the cookies are cooked through. You can use a spatula or a palette knife to gently lift one cookie to check if the bottom has cooked. They should be a lovely shade of golden when done. 

Remove, cool and eat.

Almond Oat Cookies

  

Things have been a little out of whack lately. Well, not lately exactly. Let me rephrase that: things have been a little out of whack for the past eight months or so and it's all because of my husband. Well, ok, that's not really true. It's all because of my husband's work schedule — he works nights and I work in the day. He works Sundays through to Thursdays and is off on Fridays and Saturdays. I work Mondays through to Fridays and have the weekends off. This kinda makes eating together an impossibility on most days. It kinda makes cooking meals a huge pain as well. And grocery shopping. The only day we have off together — Saturday — we spend catching up or catching a movie. 

The result is a pantry filled with instant noodles, muesli bars and cereal: easy-fix meals for the man to eat when he wakes up at noon or to snack on when he comes back in the early hours of the morning. I used to have a hot meal waiting for him for supper but, well, I've been remiss of late and haven't had the time or energy to be quite the doting wife. Yeah, I know I could cook ahead and freeze meals but I've been too busy and he finds operating the oven too much work anyway. So, to the dude who invented instant noodles,  big thank you!

This weekend I decided to make a huge batch of Almond Oat Cookies for him to eat for breakfast, tea or whenever. 

Biscuits for breakfast? Am I kidding you?

These babies are nutritious. No, really. They're like cereal, actually. Sure, there's a fair amount of sugar in them but there's sugar in them muesli bars too, right? Plus, they are packed with oats and almonds ... now that can't be all bad, right?

More importantly, they're lovely to have with a cup of coffee or tea or a glass of milk. They're nice and chewy with a little crunch, thanks to the almond bits.

And, most importantly, they're real quick to whip up and they fill you up real fast — three cookies at a go is all I can manage. This is good news because three dozen cookies will go a long way ... at least till next weekend. I hope. 

And if not? Well, there are still about a half-dozen packets of instant noodles!

Almond Oat Cookies

1/2 cup all purpose flour, sifted
1/2 cups sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
1/2 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup shaved/sliced blanched almonds
2 tbsp cream
2 tbsp golden syrup (or honey/light corn syrup)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup melted butter

Preheat the oven to 190C.

Whisk the butter, corn syrup, cream and vanilla till well incorporated.

Mix the dry ingredients together: the flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, salt, oats and almonds.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet and stir till it becomes a soft dough.

Drop teaspoonfuls of the batter on a lined baking sheet, about 1 inch apart. Flatten the mounds gently with the back of a spoon.

Bake for 8-10 mins. Let them cool slightly before transferring them to a rack to cool completely.

Store in an airtight container.

Checkmate!

This was my first attempt at making checkerboard cookies and as you can see, they're far from perfect, appearance-wise. I certainly wasn't going to serves them to anyone other than my husband, who is often the unsuspecting victim to my kitchen foibles. This time though he surprised me by gobbling up much of the cookies at one go. I guess he isn't one who goes for appearances ... err, good to know but what does that say about me? Hmmmm...

Back to the cookies. What you need is precision and attention to detail, two things I sorely lack. What you need to do is make a basic cookie dough, divide it in half, flavour one with cocoa powder and toll them both out into identical 7-inch squares (identical in size and thickness) and then cut the squares into exact strips, about 1/2 cm wide (or slightly less). Here's where I failed. I didn't roll my chocolate dough thin enough and my strips weren't all 1/2 cm wide. The result? Imperfect squares in the checkerboard. 

But all is well. I've resolved to be less uptight this year (one of my many new year resolutions that I intend to keep) and I'm not hung up over the aesthetic imperfections of my cookies. They're homemade not gourmet,  and therefore it's fine that they're rustic (that's what I'm calling them, ok). 

The appeal of the cookies isn't just aesthetic. The combination of vanilla and chocolate is a winner and, if you add finely chopped nuts into the dough, you're in for a treat.

Martha's Checkerboard Cookies

225g butter, softened

1/2 cup sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 tsp lemon extract (optional)

21/2 cups all purpose flour

1/4 tsp salt

3 tbsp cocoa

1 egg beaten + 1 tbsp water

Cream the butter and sugar till incorporated. Add the vanilla and lemon extracts and mix. Turn the mixer to a slow speed and gradually add in the flour (mix in the salt to the flour first).

When the dough comes together, gently knead it for about 3-5 mins and then divide the dough into two equal halves.

Mix in the cocoa to one half of the dough until it's well incorporated. 

Roll each ball of dough in between two sheets of plastic into two identical 7-inch squares (thickness of about 1/2 cm thick). Using a sharp knife, slice each square into 1/4 cm wide strips. 

Whisk the egg and water and keep aside.

Cover your work surface with plastic. Place three strips of dough on the plastic, close together (white, chocolate, white). Brush the top of the strips with the egg wash and repeat this time starting with the chocolate strip (chocolate, white, chocolate). Brush the top with egg again and repeat (white, chocolate, white). 

Wrap the block (with the three layers) with the plastic and refrigerate.

Repeat with the remaining dough.

Chill the blocks for 30 mins. Preheat the oven to 180. Bake for 10-12 mins.

Chocolate Spritz Cookies

How does one misplace an ingredient? Well, these chocolate cookies were supposed to be green — as in flavoured with green tea powder. But, for the life of me, I couldn't find the tin of matcha green tea powder I had purchased in Japan some time ago. I literally cleaned out my kitchen shelves looking for the darn thing. Where'd it go? If I didn't know better, I'd think my kitchen pantry was haunted. Oh well.

Since I'd taken out my butter to cool and measured all the other ingredients for these cookies, I decided to replace the green tea powder with cocoa powder instead — at least I knew where the cocoa was.

Scatterbrain, you say? Well, you're absolutely right. Still, the cocoa was a good substitute and these spritz cookies — made with my mum's old cookie press — turned out well.

The recipe is courtesy of Martha Stewart — she has a basic dough recipe for spritz cookies and also variations depending on the flavour you hope to achieve: citrus, chocolate, spiced or just plain vanilla. She also suggests various glazes for the cookies which I chose to forgo the glaze time around — the stress of hunting down the green tea powder left me a little winded. Yes, of course I am exaggerating. 

A spritz cookie is ultimately a butter cookie that's made using a cookie press. The term 'spritz' comes from the German word 'spritzen' which is to squirt. well, the cookie press doesn't exactly squirt out cookies but you get the idea, right?

A cookie press (see pic above) is a cylindrical device made of stainless steel (the more modern ones come in plastic). It comprises a barrel to hold the dough, a stainless steel lever/trigger that 'squirts' out the dough and a set of shape-discs that determine what shape your cookies take: the shapes include pretty wreaths, flowers, trees, rosettes, stars, and stripes, hears and many more. Pretty neat!

For the dough to go through the discs, the consistency has to be a little softer than the dough you use for cut-out cookies. And, it has to be chilled first.

I had a blast playing with the different shapes and decided to garnish them with desiccated coconut because I love coconut.

FYI: If you don't have a spritzer, just add 1 tsp baking powder and scant 1/3 cup four to the the same recipe and you can make cut-out cookies with them. 

Chocolate Spritz Cookies

22/3 cups all purpose flour

1/3 cup cocoa

1/2 tsp salt

228g unsalted butter

1 cup sugar

1 egg

2 tsp vanilla extract

Whisk the flour, cocoa and salt in a large bowl.

Beat the butter and sugar in a mixer (medium-high speed) until light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla and mix until well incorporated. Reduce speed to low and add the flour gradually and beat till combined.

Refrigerate dough for at least 20 minutes before filling the spritzer with dough. Spritz the cookies straight onto a lined baking sheet, about an inch apart, and bake for 12-14 mins. Let cool completely before storing (or eating) them! 

Press One For A Cookie

I was about to end my love affair with cookies when I came across my mother's cookie kit which I stowed away in a trunk I have of "precious hand-me-downs" from my father, mother and grandmother. The trunk is truly a treasure trove as it has, among other things, my mother's old gold wedding sari (from 1964), my dad's model trains (he was obsessed with his train sets) and my grandmother's beautiful crocheted table linen. I decided to clean out the trunk (actually I wanted to see if there was any 'vintage' clothing I could salvage — I've been feeling the vintage vibe lately) and I came across an old, almost rusty biscuit tin tucked in a corner.

Ooooh. I was excited wondering what it could be. I squealed as soon as I opened the tin and spied the gold gleaming from underneath the lid. 

Not a necklace. Not a gold bar. It was my mum's old cookie press which I am quite sure is at least 40 years old. AMAZING. Why hadn't I looked for it earlier. I remember as a child of seven or eight, I'd watch as my mum made cookies using her press for our teatime treats. I used to badger her to let me try my hand at the press but she always kindly refused, allowing me to help fill it with the cookie dough instead. 

Wow. This find was huge. 

I abandoned my search for vintage wear, packed up the trunk and ran downstairs with the tin. My dog Mojo looked up, irritated at the noise I was making while he was trying to nap, I presume.

I told him of my plan to bake some more cookies and he seemed satisfied and went back to sleep. 

I carefully took the cookie press — the brand was Sawa Deluxe 71 — out of the tin and inspected the condition of the gadget. It hadn't been used for at least ten years, I am sure and I hoped it was still functional.

Turns out, it was more than just functional. It was in mint condition. Old is gold.

The cookie press comes in four parts: a gold metal tube that holds the dough; a screw-on ring to hold the shape-discs, the plunger and lever that push the dough out through the discs. The tube still gleamed, the discs (that come in various cut-out patterns to determine the shape of the cookies) were also perfect. I tried the lever on top that pressed the dough out through the discs and it was good to go too. Fantastic. All it needed was a good wash.

I then began my search for a suitable recipe so that I could use my press immediately. Cookie press dough needs to be a little softer so that the dough can pass through the holes in the discs.

I settled on a recipe for Cream Cheese Cookies mostly because I had about 100g of cream cheese that had been sitting in my chiller for about a month.

Using the cookie press proved to be a challenge for me ... in the beginning. The problem was my dough: it was a little too soft. After I added a couple of tablespoons of flour though, it became firmer and the problem was solved.

I also had to get into the grove of using the press. There was a "switch" just beneath the lever that could adjust the thickness of the dough that comes out. My first few attempts yielded really skinny and thin cookies. I was so frustrated. Then I decided to do some research (as the manual for the press was missing) and I went online to look for a solution which is when I discovered the "switch".

Once that was settled, I was unstoppable. So excited was I that I took out my sugar sprinkles and went crazy on my cookies.

The Cream Cheese Cookies were tasty. It is a soft cookie, so don't hope for a crunch.

Cream Cheese Cookies

225g unsalted butter, softened

100g cream cheese

1 cup Castor sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 egg yolk

1 tsp lemon zest

21/2 cup all purpose flour, sifted

1/2 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 180C. Cream the butter and cream cheese in the electric mixer (paddle attachment) until soft. Add the sugar and mix till light and fluffy. Add the vanilla extract and egg yolk and mix till well incorporated. Add the zest and a couple of seconds later, the sifted flour and salt. Mix on low speed till evenly combined. The dough should resemble play-dough. If it's too soft, add a couple of tablespoons flour into the dough by hand.

Get the cookie press ready. 

Screw on the rod/lever to the tube. 

Take a portion of the dough and roughly shape it into a log and fit it into the tube from the bottom of the tube. 

Choose a disc with a cut out pattern that you like and then place it on the bottom ring. Screw the ring on to the bottom of the tube. 

Place the cookie press down on a flat surface and pump the lever a few times to push the dough to the bottom of the press. You should hear a loud clicking sound as so do this. You  should be able to feel when the rod touches the dough indicating that the dough has reached the bottom and is ready to be pressed.

Have a trial run. Keeping the press flat on a baking tray (ungreased). Push the lever down once to push the dough through the disc. Lift the press straight up and you will be able to see the shaped cookie on the tray. Leave a 2cm gap between each cookie and repeat.

Bake the cookies for about 10 mins. You can decorate them with sprinkles or chopped cherries before you bake them or leave them plain. 

Salty, Sweet Olive Cookies

I was intrigued by Heidi Swanson's recipe for these Olive Biscuit Cookies from the get go.

Now, I've tasted savoury cookies before and they're a welcome respite from the usual sugary treats. Cheese and spices are nice in a cookie. Olives would be too, I'd imagine. But this recipe, well it is a sweet-savoury combination that's quite unique.

Heidi forewarns her readers that the salty-sweet flavour combination of this cookie (the salty olives + icing sugar dough) may be a turn off. For me, it was quite the opposite. It was a turn on. I was curious as hell.

Now, because I am such an impulsive shopper ("I'll get this, and this, and this. I could use this someday....") I had a jar of olives that had been sitting on the shelf for too long and so this was perfect. And, given my current fascination with cookies, I was off my seat just as soon as I finished reading through her recipe.

I excitedly laid out my cookie kit: damn! I really should invest in more cookie cutters. Mine were limited to a set of fluted round cutters and another set of gingerbread man cutters. Not much of a cookie kit now is it? That's ok. These cookies will be stand out enough because of the flavours and I'll pick up some interesting cutters over the weekend.

Olive cookies
130g unsalted butter, softened
85g icing sugar
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
185g all-purpose flour
55g/1/2 cup pitted black olives, chopped small
2 pinches fine sea salt

Cream butter until soft and fluffy. Stir in the icing sugar until it's well combined. Drizzle the olive oil over and stir it in. Now, using a wooden spoon (it's sturdier than a spatula), gently mix in the flour to form a dough. Add the olives and salt until the olives are distributed kinda evenly throughout the dough.

Shape the dough into a thick disk and place in between two sheets of parchment paper. The dough will be sticky and the paper will make it easier to roll out.

Roll the dough till it's about .5 cm thick. Refrigerate for about 30 mins. The dough is soft and so it needs to be refrigerated to be firm enough to cut.

When you're ready to cut the cookies into shape, pre-heat the oven to 180C.

Cut out your shapes, place on a lined baking sheet and bake each batch for about 12 minutes, rotating midway. If your dough gets soft again mid-way through cutting, pop it in the fridge again for about 15 minutes and continue. 

Plain and simple

Folks, this is a lesson on how you should never say never. 

It wasn't too long ago that I declared my dislike for baking cookies. Too time consuming, I said it was. Tedious, even. Besides, I didn't have the patience or the knack for making cookies. 

Well, guess what? I'm now hooked on baking biscuits. What happened? Well, it started with a batch of chocolate chip cookies I baked some time back. They were an experiment: a challenge I posed to myself after watching an episode of Throwdown With Bobby Flay on the Food Network. The cookies turned out great. Everyone I offered it to love it. In fact, my nephew asked for more. My sister-in -law even. My husband too. 

I was on cloud nine. Suddenly, baking cookies didn't seem tedious anymore. Instead, it was strangely satisfying. 

I'm easy, aren't I? (you can't see me but I am cowering in shame).

Encouraged by the success of the choc chip cookies, I recently tried making a batch of Toasted Almond Sables. The French butter cookies turned out great too. Oh my. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it wasn't so difficult. 

I was inspired. More. I want to make more cookies. I settled on making Rachel Allen's basic cookie recipe next. I love watching Rachel Allen's Bake on the food channel. Her cookies always look so yummy and not at all daunting. 

While the basic cookie tastes good in itself (soft, not too sweet or crumbly), it's actually a blank canvas that can be the basis for a variety of flavour combinations: you can add nuts, lemon zest, orange zest, candied peel, dried fruit, spices ... anything you wish, to add flavour and texture to the cookie. 

I decided to jazz my cookie up with lemon zest.  Lemon in any dessert is a winner in my book. 

The cookies turned out well. They were light, buttery but not too much. The lemon added a sparkle to the cookie. A tangy pop. Next time, I'm going to try adding some nuts. 

Yes, next time. I'm hooked!

Basic Cookie (with lemon zest)

225g unsalted butter, softened

110g Castor sugar

275g all purpose flour

2 tbsp lemon zest

Preheat the oven to 170C.

Cream the butter in the mixer until, well, creamy. Add the sugar and mix till light and fluffy. Gradually add the flour and zest till a dough forms. Be gentle. The gentler you are, the more tender your cookie. 

Spoon walnut sized portions of the dough on a lined baking tray and flatted the balls with the back of a spoon. To avoid the dough sticking to the spoon as you do this, coat it lightly with flour. 

Bake for about 13-15 minutes. The cookies will be soft when you take the out but fret not, they will harden as they cool. 

Sprinkle some snow sugar/icing sugar over the cookies. Don't worry, they won't be too sweet. 

To eat? These babies are best dunked in a hot cup of tea. Or coffee, I suppose. I wouldn't no, cos I never drink coffee.

Oh there I go again: never say never I say!

Classic Choc Chip Cookie

I've always shied away from baking cookies. Too much work, not much success. But I was feeling a little adventurous tonight and decided to try my hand at it ... chocolate chip, of course.


I'd seen an episode of Throwdown with Bobby Flay on the Food Network channel some time back and was sooooo tempted by the unbelievable chocolate chip monstrosities made by triathletes Pam Weekes and Connie McDonald from New York's Levain bakery.

I don't usually eat cookies. I am not a lover of Choc Chip cookies and still I was salivating.  These two women rock the age old cookie. Chewy, oozing with chocolate and big enough to satisfy anyone's cookie cravings for about a month, their cookies are worthy of much respect.

Don't believe me? Check them out in the photo beneath or go to their website by clicking here. Bobby Flay never stood a chance with these women.

So anyways, I wasn't trying to compete. I was happy to make a batch that tasted good. I wanted to bake a batch without them burning (don't laugh; it's happened). I wanted to make cookies that looked decent (forget about nice).

I was as nervous as the cats in my neighbourhood are of my killer dog. I'm exaggerating. Dog is good. But he does hate cats.  So I read through numerous recipes and decided to make a classic choc chip cookie with some walnuts.

I bought a bag of Hershey's semi-sweet choc chips. I took out the butter from the fridge and let it soften while I watched American Idol. That Scotty McCreery is slowly but surely growing on me. I'd gladly feed him some cookies.

I measured my sugar and flour. I took out my baking trays and lined them with parchment paper. I chopped the walnuts. 

I laid out the vanilla essence, baking soda and got ready a couple of eggs. Waiting for the butter to soften, I read the recipe yet again ... that's four times now. Boy, I don't think I've been this nervous about baking in a while.

Ok. The butter is nice and soft and I'm good to go. 

Whaddaya know; mixing the batter was a piece of cake. Or cookie, in this case. But here's a lesson I learnt. The recipe said to scoop the batter using an ice-cream scoop. I had an ice-cream scoop and I used it, as per the instructions. 

The cookies turned out super-sized. Like really, really big. Huge. No more ice-cream scoop. I used a tea spoon. You can see the difference in sizes in the picture below. Other than that, everything was smooth sailing. The cookies were nice and chocolaty, slightly chewy, slightly nutty. 

I am happy. 

Chocolate Chip and Walnut Cookies 

225g butter, softened at room temp

1 cup white sugar

1 cup light brown sugar

2 eggs

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp baking soda

2 tsp hot water

3 cups all purpose flour

2 cups semi sweet chocolate

1/2 cup walnuts, toasted and chopped fine

Preheat the oven to 180C. Line three baking trays with parchment paper.

Cream the butter, white sugar and brown sugar till smooth. Add the eggs, one at a time. Beat till incorporated into the butter+sugar. Add the vanilla.

Mix the soda + hot water. Add into batter. Add the salt. Now, add the flour in three parts and mix till incorporated into the batter. 

Fold in the chocolate chips and walnuts with a spatula.

Spoon the batter using a TEASPOON onto the tray.  Drop them a distance apart as they spread. They should look like tiny balls.

Bake for 10 mins per batch or till the sides are brown and start to crisp. Remove. The centre will be soft. Don't worry, they will harden as they cool.

Eat. With a cool glass of milk. How typical? Damn straight!

These Choc Chip Cookies are a part for Sweets for Saturday, an online dessert party hosted by Lisa of Sweet as Sugar Cookies. Check her party out for more dessert ideas!

Drowned in chocolate

I don't usually bake biscuits. I don't really know why but I suspect it's because of the tedium of the task. Consider this. With a cake or a pie, once you've completed your prep work, mixed all your ingredients together and assembled your dessert, all you  need is to stick the mixture/batter/pie in the oven for a stipulated period -- 35 or 55 minutes, depending on what's cooking. Maybe, just to be safe, you'd check on how your dessert is progressing once or twice, just by peeping through the window of your oven. Cakes and pies, you see, don't need constant supervision. They allow you to multi-task: you can watch an episode of Dexter while your cake is cooking, no problem. [Season 6 of Dexter is, by the way, totally awesome].

There is NO WAY you can multi task while making biscuits. No way at all. Just like a petulant child, biscuits demand your complete attention. Unless you have an industrial-sized oven (like Anna Olsen on AFC's Fresh or Sugar), biscuits have to be baked in batches. I have an average-sized domestic oven which means I can only bake 15 smallish cookies (or 6 large ones) at one go. One batch of dough usually yields about 60 cookies which means, to bake 4 batches of bisuits, I'd have to hover around my oven for over an hour doing precisely this: roll chilled dough, cut dough into shapes, place cut dough 2 cms apart on greased tray, put tray in the oven, roll more dough for second batch of cookies, cut dough into shapes, place on second tray, remove the first batch of cookies and put in the second batch. REPEAT and then REPEAT AGAIN.

Tedious or what??

So after all this complaining why in heaven's name did I decide to make cookies last Sunday? One word: Christmas.

I don't celebrate Christmas but that doesn't stop me from getting into the festive spirit every year. I love singing Christmas carols and I love looking at Christmas menus that are featured in magazines and on cooking shows. From whisky-soaked fruitcakes to deliciously sweet mince pies to gingerbread men (and women and houses) ... Christmas cooking is fun.

So I thought I'd get in on the fun and bake some cookies.

I dug out my Women's Weekly cookbook on Biscuits and Slices and searched for a recipe that looked both tasty and easy. There were quite a few options and so I decided to go with a recipe for which I had all the ingredients ... or well almost all the ingredients. I chose to make the Chocolate Orange Rings but without the orange cream since I didn't have the orange juice required! Basically what I made was a basic butter cookie that was dipped in delicious dark chocolate and topped with chopped pistachio nuts. Are you drooling yet? You should! It's delicious.

The recipe was very simple and the dough came together really well, really fast. The biscuit tasted really good even without the chocolate coating or the springkling of nuts. But why go for the bare cookie when the chocolate coated one tasted not just good but GREAT!

I made a promise to myself that I wouldn't eat more than a couple. I don't know why I bother making such promises. I've eaten five so far and it's only been a day.

Ah well, it's Christmas. Merry Christmas me ... and you too of course. Here's the original recipe for the Chocolate Orange Rings.

125g butter

3/4 cup brown sugar, firmly packed

1 egg

13/4 cups plain flour

1/4 cup self raising flour

11/3 cups choc melts, melted (I used dark cooking choc, about 100g)

3 tsp oil

1/2 cup pistachio nuts, finely chopped

Orange cream filling

50g butter

1 tsp grated orange rind

1 tbsp milk

2 tsp orange juice

3/4 cup icing sugar

Beat butter, sugar and egg in a bowl of an electric mixer until smooth. Stir in sifted flours in 2 batches till a dough forms. Knead dough on a lightly floured surface until smooth. Wrap in cling film and refrigerate for 30 mins. 

Roll dough on lightly floured surface till 3mm thick. Cut int rounds using a cookie cutter; cut our 3 cm centres from each round so there will be a small ring in the centre (I omitted this step as I wasn't planning on sandwiching the cookies with cream). Place rings on a greased baking tray.

Bake in moderate oven (about 150C) for about 12 mins or until lightly browned. Lift gently onto wire rack to cool.

Make the cream filling: Beat butter and rind in a small bowl until smooth. Gradually beat in milk, nuice and icing sugar.

When cookies are cool, sandwich them with the filling. Dip one side or the whole cookie if you prefer in the melted chocolate and sprinkle with nuts. Place on a foil covered tray till they set. Refrigerate cookies.    

Makes about 30 sandwiched cookies.

PBJ cookies

What's better than PBJ sandwiches? How about PBJ cookies? They're flourless (yes, you read right), have practically no sugar and takes just about 30 mins to make from start to finish.

This recipe was screaming my name when I skimmed it on the Internet. I have a jar of homemade peanut butter and another of homemade jam and I've been stuffing myself silly with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and it was getting a little stale.

So I begin surfing for ideas and came upon two great recipes, both of which were twists to the classic PBJ. The first uses peanut butter in a loaf cake; the loaf cake is then sliced and sandwiched with jam. Oh, my. I so wanted to try this.

The second was a recipe was for this flourless PBJ thumbprint cookies on a blog Healthy Food for Living. Say what? A flourless peanut butter cookie?  I just had to try this one too.

I settled on the cookies simply because I had to leave for the gym in an hour and a half which didn't leave much time to bake a cake. With the cookies, I had plenty of time to not just bake them but also photograph them and eat a couple: heck, I was going to exercise my butt off, I might as well make it worth my effort! :P

What you need

1/2 cup creamy peanut butter

1 egg white, lightly whisked

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Jam

Preheat the over to 180C. Mix the peanut butter, egg white, sugar, baking soda and vanilla extract in a bowl till everything is well incorporated.

Line a baking tray with parchment paper.

Using a spoon, scoop the cookie dough and shape it into a ball. Using your thumb or finger, make an indentation in the center. Cool, crater cookies :) Repeat the same process with the rest of the cookie dough. You should get about 8 cookies. Make sure you leave about an inch between the cookies.

Now, use a teaspoon to fill the craters with jam.

Bake for 10-15 mins or till the cookies start to get golden. They will be crispy on the outside but a little soft inside. Allow to cool (and harden a little) before gobbling them down!

That's it.