Showing posts with label #CreativeCookieExchange. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #CreativeCookieExchange. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Yin Yang Cookies #CreativeCookieExchange

Fudgy dark cookie on one side with chewy oatmeal cookie on the other side, these two halves complete or more importantly, complement each other.


This month’s Creative Cookie Exchange theme is love and hearts which started me thinking about what love really is, I mean, beyond the heady first rush and tumble of quick emotions, all the highs and lows that are often the hallmarks of young relationships. I’m talking about the comfortable love that settles in, where you can complete each other’s sentences and anticipate each other’s needs, and still thoroughly enjoy spending time together, laughing, traveling, playing. And that brought to mind yin and yang, the Taoist concept of two halves that together complete wholeness.

I’m not sure that’s something two people can ever truly accomplish, but let me just put it out there that this year, in just a couple of short months, my husband and I will celebrate 30 years of marriage and 32 years of laughing, traveling and playing together. Of raising babies to young women of whom we are most proud, moving about the planet making homes in six of the seven continents and sharing the joy of life with friends and family too numerous to count. We have been so blessed.

Since we are both flawed human beings (Ain't nobody perfect folks!) still growing and learning about each other and life, I will never complete him and he may never complete me. After this many years of experience, I believe that complementing each other seems a much more worthwhile goal anyway. Together, we make a pretty solid team. Just like these cookies. These aren’t traditional cookies for Valentine’s Day but bake them for someone you love anyway.

And just because everyone's thinking it anyway, this scene:



Note: Start early in the day to allow chilling time for the two doughs.

Ingredients for about 3 dozen cookies
For the yin:
1/2 cup, firmly packed, or 100g brown sugar
3/4 cup or 150g granulated sugar
1/3 cup or 75g butter, softened
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup or 125g flour
3/4 cup or 60g unsweetened extra dark cocoa
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon double-acting baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

For the yang:
1 cup or 200g granulated sugar
1/2 cup or 115g butter, softened
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups or 156g flour
1 teaspoon double-acting baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup or 95g uncooked quick rolled oats

To decorate: handful each white and semi-sweet chocolate chips
Useful tool: 5 in or 13cm length of stiff wire for marking where to cut the cookie dough

Method
For the yin dough:
Cream your butter with the two sugars.

Add in the egg and vanilla extract and beat again.



Sift the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt into the mixing bowl. Mix well until thoroughly combined.



Roll into a thick log about 2 inches or 5cm in diameter and cover tightly with cling film. Put the dough log in the refrigerator to chill for at least an hour.



For the yang dough:
Cream your butter with the sugar.

Add in the egg and vanilla extract and beat again.



Sift in your flour, baking powder and salt and mix well.

Add in the oats and keep mixing until thoroughly combined.



Roll into a thick log about 2 inches or 5cm in diameter and cover tightly with cling film. Put the dough log in the refrigerator to chill for at least an hour.

Try to get your logs the same approximate size


While the dough is chilling, bend your wire around the neck of a bottle, first one way and then the other, to make a tool the approximate outline of the division between the yin and yang.


Once the dough is well chilled, preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C. Prepare your cookie sheet by greasing it with non-stick spray or lining it with parchment paper or a silicone liner.

Putting the two together 
Slice your two cookie dough logs into even slices. Use your wire tool to press down on the slices to mark where to cut them into two. You can, of course, do this free hand. But the pieces might not match up as neatly.

Use the tip of a sharp knife to cut each slice apart. Fit them back together, one half light, the other half dark, pressing gently to make them one on the prepared cookie sheet.



Decorate each with one white and one dark chocolate chip.



Bake in your preheated oven for about 12-15 minutes or until just done for chewy cookies.



Leave to cool for a few minutes in the pan, then remove them to a wire rack to cool completely.


Enjoy!



These would also be pretty cool for Chinese New Year, another holiday coming upon us shortly. Many thanks to Deepti of Bakingyummies for handling the hosting responsibilities this month!

Check out all the other interpretations of love and hearts from my fellow Creative Cookie Exchange bakers this month.


We get together once a month to bake cookies with a common theme or ingredient so Creative Cookie Exchange is a great resource for cookie recipes. Be sure to check out our Pinterest Board and our monthly posts at The Spiced Life). We post the first Tuesday after the 15th of each month!


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Posted by at 5:15:00 AM 0 comments
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Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Gingerbread Biscotti #CreativeCookieExchange

All the spicy flavors of gingerbread, ramped up a notch or two with the addition of chewy crystallized ginger and crunchy toasted almonds, are represented in these very dunk-able biscotti, decorated with the requisite royal icing. They are perfect to enjoy on a winter morning with a hot cup of something special, or to wrap up as gifts. 

When my girls were growing up and we neared Christmas on the calendar – we lived far too near the equator for the other usual harbingers of the season like falling leaves or a nip in the air – I often baked gingerbread for their after school snacks. And we always made some gingerbread men together as a weekend project, decorating them lavishly with royal icing. The smell as the gingerbread bakes is heavenly!

Yes, somehow gingerbread and the Christmas season just go together. How could I resist turning gingerbread into biscotti for this month’s Creative Cookie Exchange? And don't forget, being twice baked and crunchy, biscotti are very good travelers, in case you need a homemade gift for someone far away.

Many thanks to Laura from The Spiced Life for organizing us each month and for coming up with this great theme!

This recipe is adapted from one at Christmas Cookies.

Ingredients for about 55-60 biscotti
For the biscotti dough:
1 cup or 150g almonds, blanched
3/4 cup or 150g sugar
1/2 cup or 113g butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup or 120ml dark molasses
3 eggs
3 cups or 375g flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup or 75g candied ginger, coarsely chopped

For the royal icing:
1 1/2 cups or 190g icing sugar
1 egg white (Do not serve raw unpasteurized eggs to persons with compromised immune systems.)
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
Pinch salt

Method
Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and line two cookies sheets with baking parchment or silicone baking mats.

Toast your almonds for about 10-15 minutes in the preheated oven using a small baking pan where they can fit in one layer. Keep an eye on the almonds and shake or stir the pan at about the five-minute mark to make sure they aren’t scorching on one side. You are looking for a nice golden color.

Let the almonds cool, chop them very coarsely, and set aside. Turn your oven temperature down to 300°F or 149°C.

In large bowl of an electric mixer, cream together the sugar, butter and molasses until smooth.

Add the eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. Your batter may look a little curdled at this point but it's nothing to worry about.



In another mixing bowl, sift together your flour, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, allspice and salt.

Add the candied ginger to the dry ingredient bowl and use your fingers to separate the pieces and coat them with the dry ingredients so they don’t stick together again.



Add in the almonds to the dry bowl and mix well.



Tip the dry ingredients into the egg mixture; mix well to combine. The dough is going to be quite sticky.

Divide your dough up into four equal pieces and wrap each in a large piece of cling film. Use the cling film to shape the dough into four flat loaves, about a 1/2 in or 1 1/4cm thick and 2 inches or 5 1/2 cm wide.



Turn your dough loaves out on to your prepared pans, leaving plenty of room between them for expansion as they bake.



Dampen your hands with water so they won't stick to the dough and to pat the loaves into shape, if necessary.



Bake in your preheated oven until browned at edges and springy to touch, about 25 minutes. Depending on how well your oven circulates, you might need to rotate the pans midway though the baking time so everything gets evenly browned.

Leave the loaves to cool for about 15-20 minutes on the baking sheets.



Remove the loaves to a cutting board and use a serrated bread knife to cut them into long, 1/2-inch or 1 1/4cm thick diagonal slices.



Return the slices to the baking sheets, with one of the cut sides down.



Return to the oven and bake about 15 to 18 minutes longer, turning the biscotti over once halfway through the baking. Once again, rotate the pans if necessary to get an even bake. They should be slightly more brown around the edges.


Transfer biscotti to racks and let cool completely.

To make the royal icing, sift your sugar into a small bowl, then add the pinch of salt, the lemon juice and the egg white. Mix together until smooth.



Spoon the icing into a piping bag and use a small tip to decorate the biscotti.



Serve, or store in an airtight container of up to 1 month; wrap well and freeze for longer storage.

So much gingerbread biscotti! 
Enjoy!



Biscotti (or mandelbrot or any other twice baked cookie by any other name) are one of the perfect Holiday tin cookies! They last forever, and there are so many ways to make them festive. So Creative Cookie Exchange has got you covered--sweet, savory, low fat, loaded with decadence, you name it, we’ve got it! Happy Holidays!


Creative Cookie Exchange is  a great resource for cookie recipes! Be sure to check out our Pinterest Board and our monthly posts (you can find all of them at The Spiced Life). We post together the first Tuesday after the 15th of each month!


Looking for more gingerbread deliciousness?

Check out my Rich Gingerbread Muffins with Honey Ginger Glaze

Or my Dark Chocolate Gingerbread Muffins. Both perfect for a special tea or breakfast!

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Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Cream Cheese Cinnamon Roll Cookies #CreativeCookieExchange

Cream cheese cookie dough is filled with cinnamon and brown sugar, rolled up, sliced and baked till golden then drizzled with sweet cream cheese glaze.

Is there anything that smells better than a kitchen with something cinnamon baking in the oven? I’m pretty sure there isn’t! I have a quite a few recipes, sweet and savory, that call for cinnamon and it’s not uncommon for me to increase the amounts, especially in a sweet dish.

One of our first overseas posting after marriage was in Balikpapan, Indonesia where fragrant cinnamon sticks were cheap and easy to find. When we moved on to Paris, I made sure to pack loads of spices needed for curries and the like, pretty sure that they wouldn’t be as available. And so began my on-again-off-again quest for spices, especially quills of cinnamon bark, from the markets of southeast Asia to South America, to northern Africa and the Middle East, even in a little out-of-the-way Mom and Pop shop called Flores’ Spice Co. in Houston, Texas. It’s been sort of a personal mission and I am please to say that our current home, Dubai, has a fabulous spice souk too, just near the far bank of the Dubai Creek. Do put it on your list if you ever come to visit.

This month my Creative Cookie Exchange group is baking with cinnamon. These cinnamon roll cookies are great for when you’d like the flavors of a cinnamon roll without waiting for the dough to rise. That said, the rolled, filled dough keeps for several days well wrapped in the refrigerator or for a few weeks in the freezer. Just thaw, slice and bake when you are ready.

Make sure you scroll down to see the other great cinnamon recipes our fearless leader, Laura of The Spiced Life and the rest of the group have for you this month. Special thanks to Renee from Magnolia Days for handling the technical details and creating our link list.

This recipe was adapted from one on A Spicy Perspective.

Ingredients for 2 dozen cookies
For the cookie dough:
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon dry active yeast
3/4 cup or 170g unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 oz or 57g cream cheese, at room temperature
1/2 cup or 100g sugar
2 cups or 250g all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt

For the filling:
1/4 cup or 50g dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon cinnamon
Pinch fine sea salt

For the cream cheese glaze:
1 1/4 oz or 35g cream cheese, at room temperature
1-2 tablespoons whole milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup or 125g powdered sugar

Method
Hydrate your dry yeast by mixing it with the teaspoon of vanilla extract. Without any warmth, it doesn't really activate but the slight yeasty flavor is still there.

Cream your butter and cream cheese with the sugar and vanilla/yeast until light and fluffy using handheld electric beaters or in the bowl of your stand mixer.

With the mixer on low, add in the salt and then the flour, a little at a time. Scrape down the bowl occasionally and mix until everything is well combined.



Flatten the dough and wrap it in cling film. Refrigerate at least half an hour.



Preheat your oven to 375°F or 190°C and line your baking sheet with baking parchment or a silicone mat.

Mix your brown sugar, cinnamon and the pinch of salt together, making sure to press out any lumps in the brown sugar.


Lightly flour a piece of wax paper and roll the dough into a 7x18 in or 18x46cm rectangle that is approximately 1/4 in or a little more than 1/2cm thick. I marked my lengths on the underside of my waxed paper with a permanent marker for easier measuring. Tidy the edges up a little by pushing inwards with the side of a blunt knife.



Sprinkle on the brown sugar/cinnamon mixture covering the dough completely on three sides but leaving the one long side farthest from you bare about 1 1/2 in or 3cm from the edge.



Starting on the long side closest to you, begin rolling the dough up tightly.



Use the waxed paper to make sure you get it rolling evenly all the way along.

Once you get to the other side, bring the waxed paper up from that edge and fold the naked dough over to form a seal with the dough roll.




Now roll the whole thing up in the waxed paper. Cut off the uneven end of the roll and discard. (Read: Eat raw.) Then cut the roll into 1/2 in or 1cm slices. (I sliced half and saved the other half for later, wrapping it tightly in cling film around the waxed paper and freezing.)

Remove the waxed paper from each slice and put them on your prepared baking sheet. Bake in your preheated oven for 12-15 minutes or until the edges start to brown .



Allow to cool completely before glazing.



To make the glaze
Use a fork to loosen the cream cheese by mixing it with one tablespoon milk and the vanilla extract.

Add in the powdered sugar a little at a time and stir well to combine. Add in a little more milk if you want a thinner glaze.



Once the cookies are completely cool, drizzle on the glaze or spread it on with a knife.



Enjoy!




Check out all the other fragrant cinnamon cookies we have for you today!



The Creative Cookie Exchange gets together once a month to bake cookies with a chosen theme or ingredient. We post on the first Tuesday after the 15th of each month.

You can also use us as a great resource for cookie recipes. Be sure to check out our Pinterest Board as well as our monthly posts, collected for you on The Spiced Life.

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