baking – biscuits / cookies

Spicy chocolate cookies

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Spicy chocolate cookies

Cookbook Challenge: Week 24
Theme: Chocolate
Recipe: Spicy chocolate cookies
From: The Golden Book of Chocolate

Second recipe: Mexican chicken mole
From: The Golden Book of Chocolate

We’re on week 24 of the Cookbook Challenge and the theme this week is chocolate. I decided to crack open a book that Bro gave me a while ago – the Golden Book of Chocolate – and make two recipes. One sweet, and one savoury. Oh yes, savoury!

Let’s start with the sweet. I LOVE chilli and chocolate together, so I decided to make spicy chocolate cookies (biscuits? let’s stick with cookies). As I was baking these cookies, I realised why I don’t make cookies often. Because I don’t find it rewarding! The batch of cookies used 250g of chocolate as one of the ingredients and I only made 19 cookies! C’mon! For that amount of chocolate I could have had a massive chocolate cake, such as the best chocolate cake ever.

Spicy chocolate cookies

That aside, what did I think of the cookies? I made a couple of changes to the recipe – rather than using coffee liqueur I opted for strong espresso, and instead of chocolate chips I dug out some cocoa nibs that I had in the pantry. I’m glad I didn’t use chocolate chips because OH MY GOD these things were sweet! Mostly, I blame the inclusion of raisins – why oh why oh why with the raisins? If I felt like making these again I would definitely leave out the raisins. I would also up the amount of chilli flakes, they were only very faintly spicy and could have used a bit more punchiness.

Or perhaps I might just bake a cake next time. 🙂

Chicken mole

On to the savoury – the second recipe was a Mexican (inspired) chicken mole. Having never eaten a proper mole before, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. What can I say about this? It was weird and I’m sure that it was the recipe’s/my fault as I have no doubt that a proper and authentic mole would be rather delicious. My main issue with my mole was due to an oily aftertaste I thought I could detect. The recipe asked for a cup of breadcrumbs, and I’m sure that the aftertaste was due to the breadcrumbs. I should’ve used better quality breadcrumbs! Oh well. As for the inclusion of chocolate, the dish didn’t taste like chocolate – it just seemed to add an interesting dimension to the sauce. I would really like to try a proper mole one day.

Anyway, enough of that. Let’s have a look at the cookies again, shall we?

Spicy chocolate cookies

Ahh. That’s better.

See previous Cookbook Challenge posts here.

Update: see the round up at My Food Trail.

Spicy chocolate cookies

Spicy chocolate cookies

Adapted from The Golden Book of Chocolate

Makes about 18 cookies

2/3 cup (100g) plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes (or more if you’re feeling brave – do it!)
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (60g) raisins (highly recommend that you leave this out!)
2 tablespoons strong coffee
250g dark chocolate, coarsely chopped
1/4 cup (60g) butter
2 large eggs
3/4 cup (150g) caster sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup (90g) cocoa nibs (or chocolate chips)

Preheat the oven to 180°C and line a baking tray with baking paper.

Heat the raisins and coffee in a small saucepan (or in the microwave).

Place the chocolate and butter in a heat proof bowl over a pot of simmering water until melted. Set aside to cool.

In an electric mixer, beat the eggs and sugar at high speed until very pale and creamy (about 5 minutes).

Add the chocolate mixture and vanilla extract to the eggs, and mix at medium speed.

Add the flour, baking powder, red pepper flakes and salt to the mixer and beat on low speed. Add the raisin mixture and cocoa nibs (or chocolate chips) and mix until combined. It will be a very wet, thick batter/dough.

Drop tablespoons of the dough a couple of centimetres apart on the prepared baking tray. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until risen slightly.

Let the cookies cool on the baking tray for about 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

Chicken mole


Mexican inspired chicken mole

From The Golden Book of Chocolate

Serves 4

1.3kg chicken pieces
1 onion, peeled and cut into quarters
4 tablespoons blanched almonds
2 tablespoons sesame seeds
2 tablespoons raisins
3 black peppercorns
1 clove
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons red chilli paste
2/3 cup water
1 onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
3 tomatoes, peeled and chopped
1 cup fine dry breadcrumbs
1 tablespoon sunflower oil
30g dark chocolate
salt and pepper

In a large pot, place the chicken pieces, the quartered onion, and enough water to cover. Bring to the boil and let it simmer until cooked – about 30 minutes should do the trick. Remove the chicken and strain the liquid into a bowl, setting aside for later. Cut the chicken into bite sized pieces, discarding the skin.

Place the chicken in a large oven proof bowl and set aside. Preheat the oven to 180°C.

In a dry frying pan, toast the almonds and sesame seeds until lightly browned. Transfer to a mortar and pestle with the raisins, peppercorns, clove and cinnamon and crush until finely ground. Transfer the mixture to a food processor, along with the chile paste, water, chopped onion, garlic, tomatoes and breadcrumbs and process until smooth.

Heat a frying pan over medium heat and saute the processed mixture for about 5 minutes. In a separate saucepan, add 2/3 cup of the reserved stock and the chocolate. Stir over a low heat until melted.

Add the chocolate mixture to the sauteed mixture and season well with salt and pepper. Pour the sauce over the chicken, and place in
the oven, baking for about 30 minutes. Serve hot.

Greek shortbread

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Cookbook Challenge: Week 5
Theme: Greek
Recipe: Greek shortbread
From: The Australian Women’s Weekly – The Complete Book of Modern Entertaining

Second recipe: Lamb skewers with tzatziki
From: Darina Allen’s Ballymaloe Cookery Course

Greek shortbread

This weekend, Rilsta from My Food Trail invited me, Kat from Spatula, Spoon & Saturday, and Arale79 from Meals on Budget over to do some baking. The idea was to bring a recipe, ingredients, do the baking, and then eat our creations!

I decided to kill two birds with one stone, and do Greek Shortbread so I could tick off my Cookbook Challenge recipe.

After a delicious lunch of Rilsta’s moussaka, and Arale’s watermelon and feta salad, Kat and I headed into the kitchen to make some baked goods. Let me tell you, Rilsta’s kitchen is the cleanest, most organised kitchen I have ever been in. Since I’m a rather messy cook/baker, I had to try my best not to get flour, butter or sugar everywhere!

Fortunately, the shortbread were easy to make, so there wasn’t much of an opportunity to make a mess. However, I over softened the butter, so the shortbread dough was EXTREMELY soft, and very difficult to shape. I mostly plopped bits of dough on to the tray and poked them into rough crescent shapes!

When the biscuits were ready, they were meltingly soft and crumbly. I think that may have been because the butter was so soft. I didn’t do very well coating them in icing sugar though – whoops!

We finished off the afternoon with Kat’s delicious semolina and yoghurt syrup cake and some home made ice cream from Rilsta. It was a fun day, thanks gals!

Lamb skewers with tzatziki

When I got home, I managed to do another recipe for the Challenge – lamb skewers with tzatziki. I thought the lamb was tasty, but I do wish I had tasted the marinade before adding lemon juice. I thought it was a touch on the sour side. But apart from that, the lamb was nice and tender and I would try the marinade again.

See previous Cookbook Challenge posts here.

Update: Head to My Food Trail to see the round up of other people’s posts this week.

Greek shortbread

Greek Shortbread
From The Australian Women’s Weekly – The Complete Book of Modern Entertaining

250g unsalted butter, chopped and softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup (80g) pure icing sugar, sifted
1 egg yolk
1 tablespoon brandy
1/2 cup (70g) finely chopped toasted flaked almomnds
2 cups (300g) plain flour
1/2 cup (75g) self-raising flour
pure icing sugar to coat

Preheat the oven to 160°C.

Beat the butter, vanilla extract and sugar in an electric mixer until it is pale and fluffy.

Beat in the egg yolk and the brandy.

Stir in the almonds and the sifted flours.

Take a tablespoon of dough and roll it into a sausage shape, tapering slightly at the ends. Bend it into a crescent. Repeat with the rest of the dough.

Place the shortbread on a lightly greased oven tray and bake for about 15 minutes or until slightly browned. Leave on the trays for 5 minutes to cool.

Dust the shortbreads heavily with sifted icing sugar and cool on a rack.

Lamb skewers with tzatziki

Lamb skewers with tzatziki

Adapted from Darina Allen’s Ballymaloe Cookery Course

Serves 8

900g lean shoulder or leg of lamb

For the marinade:
300ml natural yoghurt
2 cloves crushed garlic
2 teaspoons ground corinader
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
juice of 1/2 lemon (I recommend tasting your marinade to see how sour it is before adding this)

Cut the lamb meat into 2.5cm cubes and season with salt and pepper.

Mix together the marinade, and put the meat into it for at least an hour (I left mine overnight).

Drain the meat and thread the pieces on to skewers.

Grill for 7-10 minutes on a barbecue until cooked, and serve with the tzatziki.

Tzatziki

1 cucumber, peeled and diced into 3-5mm cubes
salt
1 garlic clove, crushed
425ml greek or natural yoghurt
1 heaped tablespoon mint, freshly chopped
salt and papper

Put the diced cucumber into a sieve and sprinkle with salt. Leave it to drain for 30 minutes.

Dry the cucumber on kitchen paper and then place into a bowl with the garlic, yoghurt and mint. Stir well to combine and season with salt and pepper.

Lemon and poppy seed cookies

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Lemon and poppy seed cookies

I’m a bit of a sucker for kitchen gadgets and kitchen tools. Some would say that all you need is a good saucepan and a good knife, but I like my kitchen stuff. One of my favourite kitchen things is a microwave steamer for steaming vegetables in. I love this thing so much that when we bought a new microwave, I made sure that the steamer fit first! (Yes, yes, I know that you can steam vegetables on top of the stove but with this I don’t need to drag out a pot and pan and take up a hob – plus it takes four minutes in the microwave.)

Last weekend I was keen to make cookies (or biscuits if you prefer) and I wanted to use my cookie press, just one of my many kitchen gadgets. When I was looking up cookie recipes online, I decided that I wanted to do something with lemon and poppy seeds. After some searching, I found a simple recipe for cookie press cookies that I was able to adapt.

They were pretty easy to put together but it did take me a while to get all the cookies pressed out and baked….. because I ended up with about 80 of the little buggers! I tried out several different shapes – the hearts tended to lose their shape but I found that the flower shapes faired better.

But presentation isn’t as important as taste, and the verdict? They were awesome! The cookies were buttery and crisp, but kind of melted in the mouth. They had just the right amount of sweetness, were rather lemony, and the poppy seed added a bit of savouriness. Oh my, they were moreish. I found it really, really difficult to eat only one… One day I came home after work and found myself eating six in a row. Gulp! Cookies are a sometime food, people.

Note – if you don’t have a cookie press, I think it would work if you rolled the dough into small balls and flattened them. But if you love kitchen stuff like me, you might have a cookie press too?!

Lemon and poppy seed cookies

Lemon and poppy seed cookies

Adapted from this recipe.

Makes about 80 small cookies

225 grams butter, softened
1/3 cup caster sugar
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
Finely grated rind of a lemon
2 tablespoons poppy seeds
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups flour, sifted

Preheat your oven to 200°C.

Cream the butter until pale and fluffy. Gradually add the sugar and beat until well combined. Mix in the egg, vanilla essence, lemon rind, poppy seeds and salt. Gradually add the sifted dry ingredients and mix until combined.

Fill a cookie press and shape on to an ungreased cookie sheet. If you don’t have a cookie press, roll the dough into small balls and flatten with a fork or your hand.

Bake until golden brown – my cookies were small so I baked them for six minutes. If you have larger cookies, bake them for longer.

Transfer to a wire rack and let them cool completely.

Christmas baking: almond crescents, gingerbread cookies and cherry tarts

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Almond Crescents

Happy 2009! I hope that everyone had a fun, safe and hangover free New Years. I would love to say that there were no hangovers in this house but that would be a lie….. a big fat lie, as someone spent the first day of the year SEVERELY ill – and it wasn’t me!

But back to Xmas – for our festivities with the KKC, I prepared some baked goods so we would have some sweet stuff to munch on during the day.

One of the items I made were cookies that Sarah posted a recipe for recently. They were simple to make, and delicious. It was impossible to eat only one of these things – good thing the recipe made quite a few otherwise there wouldn’t have been any left for Xmas.

Gingerbread cookies Gingerbread cookies
Gingerbread cookies Gingerbread cookies

I also made gingerbread biscuits – teddy bears, gingerbread people, xmas trees and stars. And a special lamedeer (bottom left) for Bro. It was late when I decorated them, and my icing skills need a lot of work, as evidenced by some of the crazed expressions on my gingerbread people!

The gingerbread biscuits were okay, although I preferred the mixture before it was baked. I reckon there should’ve been more ginger. I will have to hunt for a better recipe for next year!

Cherry tarts

I also tried out a cherry tart recipe but rather than a large tart, I made smaller ones. The dough made a very crumbly, almost biscuit-type pastry – they were very enjoyable. And you know, it’s not summer or Xmas without cherries!

Cherry tarts


Cherry Tart

From Bill Granger’s Holiday

Serves 8-10

Pastry

125g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
90g caster sugar
175g plain flour
A pinch of salt
2 tablespoons almond meal

Filling

170ml cream
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2 teaspons vanilla extract
3 tablespoons caster sugar
2 tablespoons plain flour
550g cherries, halved and pitted (fresh are best)

Preheat the oven to 180°C and grease a 24cm round loose-bottomed tart tin.

Make the pastry by stirring together the butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl. Add the flour and salt and stir to make a soft dough. Transfer the dough to the tin and press evenly into the base and side of the tin with your fingertips. Put the tin on a baking tray and bake for 12-15 minutes. Remove from the oven and sprinkle the almond meal over the base.

Meanwhile, to make the filling, whisk together the cream, eggs, vanilla and sugar. Add the flour and whisk until well mixed. Arrange the cherries, slightly overlapping, over the pastry base and pour the cream filling evenly over the cherries.

Return the tart to the oven for a further 40-50 minutes until the filling is firm. Leave to cool and serve with cream or ice cream.

Peanut brittle cookies

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Peanut brittle cookies

Starting the apple, dried cranberry, and almond loaf got my baking mojo flowing, so I harnessed that energy to make something else.

I felt like making biscuits and flicked through the Australian Women’s Weekly “Bake” (you may have noticed that I have been using it a lot lately!). I came across a recipe for peanut brittle cookies that sounded good.

First I roasted peanuts to make the peanut brittle. I already had the loaf in the oven, so I popped the peanuts in with it. Then I wandered away to do something else, getting distracted and by the time I remembered the peanuts, they had just gotten past the stage of roasted. They weren’t burnt, but were very, very close and tasted darker than I would’ve liked.

Next was the caramel to pour over the peanuts. I was vigilant and stayed at the stove to watch it. It took about 10 minutes for the sugar to deepen and become golden brown – once it started to colour it happened very quickly.

Peanut brittle cookies

After the brittle was made, it was a quick process to get them the cookies into the oven. 12 minutes in the oven resulted in a soft cookie. I found that the peanut brittle melted in the oven which gave it the cookies a cracked kind of appearance – quite attractive, I thought – but it did make me wonder about the worth of making the brittle! I think I would have preferred a firmer cookie with bits of crunchy brittle, but I can’t figure out how to do that without the caramel melting. Any ideas?

Peanut brittle cookies


Peanut brittle cookies

From Australian Women’s Weekly Bake

Makes 18-24

125g butter, softened
1/4 cup (70g) crunchy peanut butter
1/2 cup (100g) firmly packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 & 1/2 cups (225g) plain flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

Peanut Brittle
3/4 cup (100g) roasted unsalted peanuts
1/2 cup (110g) caster sugar
2 tablespoons water

Make peanut brittle: Place nuts on a baking paper lined oven tray. Stir the sugar and water in a small frying pan over heat, without boiling, until sugar is dissolved; bring to the boil. Boil, uncovered, without stirring, until golden brown. Pour mixture over nuts; leave until set. Crush coarsely in food processor.

Preheat oven to 160°C/140°C fan-forced. Grease oven trays; line with baking paper.

Beat butter, peanut butter, sugar and egg in small bowl with electric mixer until combined. Stir in sifted dry ingredients and crushed peanut brittle.

Roll heaped teaspoons of mixture into balls with floured hands. Place about 5cm apart on oven trays; flatten slightly (and top with extra crushed brittle if desired).

Bake cookies for about 12 minutes. Cool on trays.

Peanut butter topped brownies

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Peanut butter topped brownies

There are some foods that work so well together. One combination that I adore is peanut butter and chocolate. With my tastes tending to savoury items, I don’t generally eat much chocolate, but I do make an exception for these brownies (and Reese’s peanut butter cups… YUM).

This recipe is very simple although mine took a while to bake (probably because I was using a deeper, narrower pan). I’ve made these brownies before and they are always very popular with their slightly salty layer of peanut butter. This time it came out very rich and fudgey, and even though the slices were small, it was pretty sweet. Next time I make them I will reduce the sugar, but I’ve left the recipe as is below.

Peanut butter topped brownies

Adapted from Should You Eat That

Makes 12-18

150g dark chocolate, chopped
100g unsalted butter
2 eggs, lightly beaten
215g (1 cup) caster sugar
75g (½ cup) plain flour
2Tbsp cocoa powder
200g (¾ cup) crunchy peanut butter
½ cup crushed peanuts

1. Preheat oven to 160ºC and line the base of a 16 x 26cm pan with baking paper. Let the paper hang over the ends so it is easier to get the brownies out once they are cooked.

2. Put the chocolate and butter in a medium to large mixing bowl and microwave for 30 seconds. Stir. Then microwave in 15 or 30 second bursts until just melted. Stir til all melted and smooth. Add eggs and sugar to the chocolate mixture along with combined caster sugar, and give a brief stir. Add plain flour & cocoa powder and stir until just combined (don’t overmix). It makes quite a stiff batter.

3. Spoon the mixture into prepared pan. If your peanut butter is quite stiff, microwave it until it’s fairly runny. Spread the peanut butter over the brownie mixture.

4. Sprinkle the crushed peanuts over the top of the peanut butter, pressing it in slightly into the mixture.

5. Bake for 35-40 minutes. It is ok if slightly undercooked. Cool slightly before removing from pan. Let it cool before cutting into slices.

Malteser biscuits for an inaugural barbeque

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Malteaser biscuits

On what turned out to be a rather windy and chilly Saturday evening, we were invited to an inaugural barbeque at Ben and Lisa’s. The inital inaugural barbeque had been scheduled several months ago, but unfortunately the connector from the barbeque to the gas bottle didn’t, well, connect. This time, we were assured that the correct connector had been purchased, and some barbeque would be had!

So it was a rather special occasion, and in it’s honour I took along a couple of sweet things. One of those items was malteser biscuits and the other was a chocolate and cherry ricotta cake (to be blogged about later).

They’re quite straight forward, and contain condensed milk and chopped maltesers (I gave mine a good bash with a rolling pin). The recipe is from taste.com.au here. My only deviation from the recipe was to only add one teaspoon of vanilla essence rather than two.

The biscuits were soft and chewy, and particularly chewy in the parts that had malteser bits. If I’m going to be picky, I think they may have been a tad dry…. which was most likely my fault as I turned on the grill instead of the oven again. I didn’t even realise until the biscuits had been in the oven for 10 minutes. Still, I was probably the only one who noticed the slight dryness, judging by how quickly the biscuits got gobbled up!

Peanut Butter Cookies

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Peanut butter cookies

I’m the kind of person who pounces on baked goods as soon as they come out of the oven. Things just seem to taste so good when they’re still warm and the kitchen is still fragrant with the baking aromas.

Naturally, as soon as these cookies came out of the oven, I HAD to try them. And… I was a little bit disappointed. All I could taste was vanilla, and only a bare hint of peanut butter.

Later on, I went back for another one after they had had time to cool. Tasting it again, the vanilla had subsided and the peanut butter had come to the fore. Yey! That was more like it.

The recipe for these cookies is here.

I used crunchy peanut butter, which I would highly recommend. And to get my cookies so round (even I was surprised how well they turned out!) I rolled the dough into balls with my hands and flattened them slightly into discs. They flattened more as they baked.

Try these. They’re easy and they taste great. Just try to resist eating one straight out of the oven.

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