Showing posts with label coconut. Show all posts
Showing posts with label coconut. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Coconut Rum Celebration Cookies #CreativeCookieExchange


These buttery shortbread cookies are flavored with fresh grated coconut and golden rum, then drizzled with rum glaze and more coconut. When the wind is whipping around you and it’s cold as cold can be outside, pour yourself a cup of steaming hot tea and bite into this luxuriously rich cookie.

This month’s Creative Cookie Exchange theme is Comfort Cookies and we were supposed to create a favorite cookie for someone in our lives. But this week I am feeling especially generous since my mom and mother-in-law arrive on Thursday to help me celebrate my own birthday on Friday. So this cookie is for ALL of you in the North Hemisphere who might be experiencing freezing temperatures and unpleasantly moist conditions. As the rich shortbread crumbles between your chattering teeth, the rum and coconut should evoke a beach vacation where you can imagine cabana boys serving fruity drinks under palm trees swaying gently in the tropical breeze, with the warm sunshine working its way to your chilled bones. If you want to add a tot of rum to your hot lemon tea to go along with, no one will judge you.

This recipe is adapted from one on The Café Sucré Farine.

Ingredients 
You could use desiccated coconut but don't use
the sweetened stuff. 

For the cookie dough:
1 cup or 225g butter, room temperature
3/4 cup or 95g powdered or icing sugar
1 1/3 cups or 165g flour
1/2 cup or 40g freshly grated coconut plus a little extra for decorating, if desired
1/2 cup or 75g cornstarch
2 teaspoons golden or dark rum
1/2 teaspoon salt

For the glaze:
1 cup powdered or icing sugar
1 tablespoon golden or dark rum
1-2 teaspoons milk
Pinch salt

For decoration: freshly grated coconut, pearl nonpareils http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonpareils  or shiny sprinkles

Method
Preheat your oven to 325°F or °C and prepare your 8x8in or 20x20cm baking pan by lining it with parchment paper.

In the bowl of your stand mixer or with handheld beaters, beat the butter briefly until it is smooth, then add the powdered sugar and beat again for about one minute.

Add in the flour, cornstarch, coconut, rum and salt and beat until just mixed.

Yay! I remembered the flour this time! 
Tip the dough into your prepared pan and cover it with cling film. Use your hands to spread out the dough evenly in the pan, making sure to get all the way into the corners.



Remove the cling film and draw lines on the dough with a sharp knife where you plan to cut the cookies apart.



Bake in your preheated oven about 18-22 minutes or until lightly golden on the sides but still pale on top.



Remove from the oven and allow to cool for about 10 minutes.

Transfer the parchment with cookies to a cutting board and carefully cut them apart while still warm, using a very large knife that will let you cut the whole way, or almost the whole way across, with one downward motion. These cookies, like all shortbread, are crumbly so you don’t want to break them while sawing at them.



Make the glaze by mixing the powdered sugar and rum with the pinch of salt. Add the milk a little at a time, stirring well between, until you get a good dripping consistency, then stop. You may not need all the milk.


Once the cookies are cool, separate them slightly on the parchment paper and drizzle the glaze back and forth over them till it’s all used.



Sprinkle them immediately with a little extra grated coconut and a couple of teaspoons of shiny decorations, if desired.



Allow the glaze to set before trying to move them or stack them.



Enjoy!



Do you need some comfort cookies? We've got something for everyone and even one for Man's Best Friend! Who would you bake a comfort cookie for?




Creative Cookie Exchange is a great group of bloggers who love to bake cookies. We get together once a month (the first Tuesday after the 15th of each month) to post cookie recipes with a common theme or ingredient.

If you are a blogger and want to join in the fun, contact Laura at thespicedlife AT gmail DOT com and she will get you added to our Facebook group, where we discuss our cookies and share links.

You can also just use us as a great resource for cookie recipes--be sure to check out our Pinterest Board and our monthly posts (you can find all of them here at The Spiced Life).


Posted by at 1:37:00 AM 0 comments
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Thursday, January 15, 2015

Glazed Chocolate Macaroon Bundt Cake #BundtBakers

As if deep dark chocolate cake with coconut macaroon filling wasn’t rich enough, I poured on a dark chocolate ganache and topped it with more sweet coconut.


Sometimes when I have a few minutes to spare, I troll the interwebs doing random searches. Once upon a time, a search on my surname led me to an old 1932 MG-D Tourer that was for sale, and according to the original sales receipt, it was a gift, brand new, from my husband’s grandmother to his grandfather! So, of course, we had to buy it.

Another time I located the father of my long lost best friend in third grade (Campo Alegre – Caracas, Venezuela 1971-1972) on a genealogy site and wrote the webmaster to please pass on my desire to reconnect. He wrote Stella’s dad and the next thing I knew, we were chatting away a mile a minute on Skype and I was being introduced to her adorable girls. The internet is awesome in the truest sense of the word.

But I must admit that most of my web searches center around food or recipes or ingredients. While searching for information about National Bundt Day last fall, I came across the blog of a baker who for several years challenged herself to bake a Bundt a day for the month leading up to that great day.  Can you even imagine! Thirty Bundts in 30 days! And she, in turn, led me to other bloggers who love Bundts through her National Bundt Day round ups. Sadly, she doesn’t seem to be blogging anymore but I hope that somehow, somewhere, she’s still baking.

The cake I am sharing with you today was a link in one of those round ups and that blogger, Tracey by name, doesn’t seem to be active any more either. In fact, I’d love to find out what happened to her because her very last post (and tweet) more than a year ago is the announcement that she finally got a blog design revamp. And that’s it. No more posts. No tweets. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Weird, right?

This glazed chocolate macaroon Bundt cake, however, is great consolation and fits our Bundt Bakers coconut theme perfectly, with coconut on the inside and coconut on the outside, so I hope Tracey doesn’t mind my sharing. She says on her post that the recipe is slightly adapted from Vintage Cakes by Julie Richardson. I have no idea how slight is slightly because I don’t have the book and the only other post I could find with it didn’t give the amounts but just referred back to the book.

So here we go!

Ingredients
For the meringue filling and batter:
4 large eggs, at room temperature
1 teaspoon salt, divided
2 cups or 400g sugar, divided
1 tablespoon vanilla extract, divided
2 cups or 230g sweetened shredded coconut
2 cups or 250g plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour, divided
1/2 cup or 40g cocoa powder
3/4 cup or 180ml hot coffee
1/2 cup or 120ml sour cream
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup or 115g unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 tablespoons canola oil

For the ganache:
1/2 cup or 120ml whipping cream
3 1/2 oz or 100g dark chocolate, roughly chopped (I just bang the chocolate bar around on the cabinet before I open it.)

More flaked coconut, for garnish, if desired

Method
Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare your 12-cup Bundt pan by greasing and flouring it or spraying it liberally with nonstick cooking spray for baking that has the flour in it already.

Crack your eggs and separate them, putting the whites in the bowl of your mixer and the yellows into two small bowls of two yolks each. You’ll use them two at a time later and this helps you keep the amounts correct in case a yolk breaks.



Add 1/2 teaspoon of the salt to the egg whites and use the whisk attachment to start beating them slowly. Gradually increase the speed until the egg whites can form soft peaks.

Then, with the mixer still running, gradually stream in 3/4 cup or 150g of the sugar and continue beating until the mixture reaches stiff peaks. Congratulations, you have made meringue!



Transfer 1 1/2 cups or 75g of this meringue to another bowl and fold in 1 teaspoon of the vanilla, the coconut, and 1 tablespoon of the flour – this is the filling for the cake.

Transfer the remaining meringue into another bowl and wash out your mixing bowl.

Whisk the cocoa powder, hot coffee, and sour cream together until smooth and lump free.


In a medium bowl, combine the remaining 2 cups of the flour with the baking powder, baking soda and the remaining 1/2 teaspoon of salt.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream together the remaining 1 1/4 cups or 250g of sugar, the butter, the oil, and the remaining 2 teaspoons of vanilla. Scrape down the sides occasionally and beat until the mixture turns pale yellow and is light and fluffy.

Add 2 of the egg yolks and beat until incorporated, then add the remaining 2 yolks, again beating until combined.

Second two, going in!


With the mixer on low, alternately add the dry ingredients in three additions and the coffee/cocoa mixture in three additions, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients and mixing just until combined.



Finally, fold in the extra meringue – not the filling! – until just combined.



Pour just slightly less than half of the batter to the prepared pan and spread in an even layer.

Use a spoon or scoop to transfer the coconut macaroon filling to the Bundt pan, making sure to keep it in the middle of the batter, never touching the sides of the pan.



Pour or scoop the rest of the batter on top of the coconut macaroon filling, making sure it’s completely covered.



Bake in your preheated oven for 45-50 minutes. Tracey says the toothpick should come out with just a few moist crumbs but I found that hard to check because of the filling.

When it’s done, take it out of the oven and put the pan on a wire rack to cool for about 15 minutes.



Gently turn the Bundt out onto the wire rack and allow it to cool completely before adding any ganache.



To make the ganache:
Warm your cream to just before boiling, either in a small pot or a microwavable bowl. Add in the dark chocolate and let it sit for a few minutes to allow the chocolate to melt.

Stir until the chocolate and cream are smooth and shiny and completely combined.

Allow to cool until your ganache is at your perfect pouring or drizzling consistency. It gets thicker and thicker as it cools. If it thickens too much, a quick zap in the microwave will loosen it back up.

Pour or drizzle over the cooled Bundt.



Sprinkle on more coconut to decorate, if desired.

Enjoy!


Many thanks to our host for this coconut Bundt Bakers challenge, Terri from Love and Confections! Check out the lovely long list of coconutty Bundts we have for you this month!






BundtBakers


#BundtBakers is a group of Bundt loving bakers who get together once a month to bake Bundts with a common ingredient or theme.  Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on the BundtBakers home page.

We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

If you are a food blogger and would like to join us, just send an email with your blog URL to foodlustpeoplelove@gmail.com.




Posted by at 5:44:00 AM 0 comments
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Monday, December 8, 2014

Almond Joy Cupcakes #CupcakeDay

All the joy of coconut and almonds, baked into a dark chocolate cupcake, made easy to assemble by using the muffin method: one bowl of wet ingredients poured into one bowl of dry ingredients. What could be more festive or easier?

Every week on this blog, I celebrate Muffin Monday with a new muffin for you, sometimes sweet and sometimes savory. Muffin Monday is a made up holiday but that doesn’t make it less festive or important because if you can start your week out with something tasty from the oven, it’s going to be a better week automatically, than if you didn’t. This week, I am joining a lovely group of bloggers for another made up holiday: Cupcake Day. After all, what is a cupcake but just a dressed up muffin? That really is the dividing line for me. Muffins can be glazed but never frosted. A big pile of icing is reserved for cupcakes. For my Almond Joy Cupcakes today, I took the middle ground and topped the muffins with one toasted almond, as they do in Almond Joy candy bars, and poured a lovely heaping helping of semi-sweet chocolate ganache over the top, after stuffing the batter and the center with sweetened coconut flakes.

Many thanks to Coleen from The Redhead Baker who spearheaded this fun celebration and handled all the hosting responsibilities!

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups or 190g flour
1/2 cup or 50g ground almonds
3/4 cup or 150g white sugar
1/3 cup or just over 27g unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
3/4 cup + 1 1/2 tablespoons or 200ml coconut milk
1/2 cup or 120ml canola or other light oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 1/2 oz or 100g semi-sweet chocolate chips
4 3/4 oz or 135g sweetened coconut flakes - divided

For the topping:
1 cup or 240ml whipping cream
8 1/2 oz or 240g semi-sweet chocolate chips
Pinch salt
12 toasted almonds

Method
Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare your 12-cup muffin tin by spraying with non-stick spray or lining it with paper cups.

Combine your flour, ground almonds, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt in a large mixing bowl.



In another smaller bowl, whisk together your eggs, coconut milk, oil and vanilla extract.


Fold the wet ingredients into the dry ones and stop when it’s still quite dry looking.

Add the chocolate chips for the batter and about half of the coconut. No need to measure, just eyeball. Stir until just mixed.



Spoon half your batter into the 12 cups.



Use your fingers to make balls out of the remaining coconut.



Tuck one in the batter of each cup.

Top the coconut balls with the remaining chocolate batter.



Bake for 20-25 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

Meanwhile you can be making the ganache. Put the cream in a little pot or a microwaveable bowl and heat till just before boiling. Remove from the stove or microwave and pour in the chocolate chips and the pinch of salt and stir until the chocolate is completely melted.

Set aside to cool. It should thicken as it cools but should still stay a pouring consistency. If it thickens too much, rewarm it gently.



When the cupcakes are done, remove them from the oven and allow to cool for a few minutes in the pan and then remove to continue cooling on a wire rack.

When they are completely cooled, dab on a bit of the chocolate ganache and stick one toasted almond on top of each.

Allow to set a little then spoon on more ganache to cover the almond and the cupcake.



Enjoy!



Looking for ways to make this week even better? How about baking one - or many -  of these 26 wonderful cupcakes?



Posted by at 6:23:00 AM 0 comments
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Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Kashata Squares #CreativeCookieExchange

A cross between candy and cookie, kashata is a popular snack in East Africa. Kashata is usually made with peanuts or grated coconut, or both, and is cooked on a stove or over a fire so no oven is needed. 

A few months ago when I was preparing for my trip to Uganda, I started researching Ugandan food. I was looking for local ingredients to use in muffins, for one thing. I wanted to bake my Monday Muffins ahead of time since I knew I wouldn’t have an oven in the hut that I was staying. My second objective was finding a sweet treat I could make for the students, without an oven. I came across kashata on several websites with varying amounts of the basic ingredients and copied and pasted a little from here and a little from there to come up with a mixture that sounded delicious. But I never ended up making them. After a long dusty day teaching the children, it was all we could do to make ourselves some dinner and fall into an exhausted sleep. When the theme for this month’s no bake cookies was announced, I knew exactly what I wanted to make. Maybe next time I go to Uganda, I’ll manage to make them for the children.

Ingredients
1/2 cup or 100g sugar
3/4 cup or 55g freshly grated coconut
1/2 cup or 75g roasted peanuts
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon flour
2 tablespoons water

Method
Mix all the dry ingredients, except the sugar, together in a small mixing bowl.


Sprinkle the sugar on to a frying pan and cook it over a medium heat, stirring, until it melts and just begins to brown. Mine melted into clumpy pieces of sugar and then finally melted into syrupy stuff again.


Reduce heat and quickly add the dry ingredients, stirring well.



Continue stirring for about a minute, making sure everything is well mixed.



Add the two tablespoons of water and mix again.



Pour out on sheet pan lined with greased foil. Press into a square with a spoon.



Allow to cool for a bit and then cut into smaller squares.



Mine were really crumbly but I did manage to cut them into squares, some missing a corner or two. This didn’t affect the taste. I would have eaten these with a spoon, if necessary.



Enjoy!


Are you looking for No Bake Cookies to Beat the Heat? I've got some great ones for you! 





The Creative Cookie Exchange theme this month is Beat the Heat with No Bake Cookies. Even if we don’t want to turn on the oven, we still want cookies! If you are a blogger and want to join in the fun, contact Laura via email (thespicedlife AT gmail DOT com) and she will get you added to our Facebook group where we coordinate events.

You can also use us as a great resource for cookie recipes. Be sure to check out our Pinterest Board and our monthly posts. You will be able to find them the first Tuesday after the 15th of each month!




Posted by at 2:30:00 AM 0 comments
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