RSS Feed

Tag Archives: chocolate chip cookies

Macadamia White Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Posted on April 9, 2018 by The quirk and the cool

The search for cookie Nirvana continues! So close and yet so far…But the journey is so much fun and so yummy!

This recipe comes from Queen Fine Foods, makers of lots of lovely flavourings including classic vanilla. I’ve been baking with Queen vanilla all my life.

These cookies are right up there in my search. They are nice and fat and very satisfying. Readers of others of my cookie recipes may remember that I’m looking for substance not splat! That’s fat cookies not thin ones.

The baking powder gives these cookies a bit more substance, plus there seemed to be quite a lot of flour in the mix making it quite stiff.

And I really like the chunks of white chocolate in the cookies instead of chocolate bits.

Here is the recipe from Queen Fine Foods, with a couple of my tweaks:

Ingredients

125g butter at room temperature

110g brown sugar

55g caster sugar

2 tsp Queen Cinnamon Baking Paste

1 tsp Queen Natural Organic Vanilla Extract

1 large free-range egg

300g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

180g white chocolate, coarsely chopped

120g macadamias, coarsely chopped*

Method

Preheat oven to 160 C degrees fan-forced. Line two large baking trays with baking paper.

Put the butter, sugar, Cinnamon Baking Paste and Vanilla Extract in a food processor and process until pale and creamy. Add the egg and blitz until well combined.

Add the flour and baking powder to the butter/sugar mixture and blitz for until just combined. Stir in the  chocolate and macadamias and mix with a big spoon. You don’t want to process the chocolate and macadamias as they will just go crumbly.

Roll slightly heaped tablespoonfuls of mixture into balls and place about a few centimetres  apart on each baking  tray. Use fingertips to flatten each ball to about 1cm thick and 6cm in diameter.

Bake in the preheated oven, swapping the trays halfway through baking, for 15-18 minutes or until lightly golden and cooked through. I prefer to cook each tray one at a time, I think it makes for a batter bake.

Cool cookies on the trays.

* I used salted macadamias. The original recipe says unsalted, but I’m a huge fan of salted nuts in cookies and trybakes.

Advertisement

4 Comments

Posted in Biscuits and Slices, Small Baked Things, Sweet Food and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Sugar Shortbread Cookies

Posted on May 28, 2017 by The quirk and the cool

IMG_0993

IMG_0985

I love cookies and make a load of them every other week. There are always small – and big children – in my world who need feeding with…cookies of course!

I have been experimenting with a Mary Berry recipe for biscuits that I found online.  See here for Mary’s recipe. It’s actually a basic shortbread recipe, ie butter, flour, sugar (no egg) with some add ons. I’ve made my own version, as outlined below.

Ingredients
175g butter, softened
100g raw sugar
75g sweetened condensed milk
175g plain flour, plus extra for dusting
75g semolina
2 tablespoons raw sugar, for rolling
50g milk chocolate chips

Method
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C or 160 degrees C fan forced.

Line 1 large baking tray or 2 smaller trays  with baking paper.
I make the dough in a food processor, but you could make it in an electric mixer – but the food processor method is super easy.

Put the butter, sugar, condensed milk, flour and semolina into a food processor and  process until the ingredients come together into a soft dough. It’s better to process in a few bursts so that you can make sure you don’t over process.

Place the dough on a floured work surface. Bring the dough together into a ball, and then shape into long sausages about 5cm/2″ diameter for smaller cookies or 8cm/3″ diameter for larger cookies. You need to make two sausages as it’s easier to shape them if they are not too long.

Wrap the sausages in cling film. They will still be quite soft, so you can continue to shape in the cling film, tightening the sausage shape. At this point put in the fridge and rest for at least a couple of hours to make the dough easier to cut into discs. You can leave overnight and the dough freezes really  well too!

Remove from the fridge, umwrap, and with a sharp knife, cut into slices – the thickness is up to you. Roll each cookie on both sides in raw sugar, gently pressing the sugar into the dough. Place the cookies onto the baking sheet/sheets, with space in between. They do spread a little, but largely keep their shape.

Once on the trays, you can leave as is, or press  chocolate chips individually onto the top of each cookie. It sounds labour intensive but actually doesn’t take that long!

Bake the cookies for 10-12 minutes until golden brown. If you cut your cookies quite thick they may take a couple of minutes  longer.

Remove from the oven and leave to cool for at least 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

IMG_1022

 

Leave a comment

Posted in Biscuits and Slices, Small Baked Things, Sweet Food and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Jamie Oliver’s Devil’s Double Choc Malt Cookies

Posted on May 26, 2016 by The quirk and the cool
IMG_6023
IMG_6017I made these luscious cookies a year or so ago. I am about to do one of my favourite things – experiment with chocolate chip cookie recipes to find the perfect chewy, not too soft not too hard chocoaltely treat! Kind of the goldilocks of cookies!
So to inspire my research efforts, I am posting again the chocolate cookie recipe from Jamie Oliver’s Comfort Food. They’re dense, chewy, deeply chocolately with dark chocolate and white chocolate and with the added malty flavour of Horlicks and Malteasers.
The recipe is quite unusual too –  condensed milk instead of sugar for the ingredients, and there are no eggs. The method is also different from a normal cookie recipe. Jamie suggests serving a couple of cookies sandwiched together with vanilla ice cream  – I thought that mascarpone might be nice –  it doesn’t melt and it’s not too sweet.
Ingredients
50 g unsalted butter
200 g quality dark chocolate
1 x 396 g tin of condensed milk
25 g ground almonds
2 heaped teaspoons Horlicks*
200 g self-raising flour
100 g Malteasers
50 g quality white chocolate
* I omitted the Horlicks – I didn’t have any – and the cookies still tasted quite malty with just the Malteasers.
Method
Melt the butter and chocolate in a pan on a low heat until smooth and combined, stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat and stir in the condensed milk, followed by the almonds andHorlicks. Sift in the flour and a pinch of sea salt, mix together, then chill in the fridge for 20 to 30 minutes (no longer). Once cool, but still pliable,smash up theMaltesers and roughly chop the white chocolate, then mix it all together.Preheat the oven to 170° degrees C. Divide the mixture into 24 equal-sized balls and place on a couple of large baking trays lined withgreaseproof or baking paper. Flatten each a little (you can freeze them at this stage to bake another day if you like),  then bake for around 12 minutes, or until chewy in the middle and firm at the edges. Leave to sit in the tray for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool.
Serve on the cookies their own, or sandwich together with ice cream, whipped cream or mascarpone. Scatter over chocolate shavings or drizzle with melted chocolate.
IMG_8378

Leave a comment

Posted in Biscuits and Slices, Dessert, Small Baked Things, Sweet Food and tagged , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.
%d bloggers like this: