Showing posts with label cookies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cookies. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Cheddar Chive Shortbread #CreativeCookieExchange

Cheddar chive shortbread is buttery, savory and crisp when first out of the oven, the perfect accompaniment to your afternoon tea or evening cocktail time. 

Shortbread is a traditionally sweet treat but since the main ingredients are flour and butter, I figure there’s no good reason it can’t be savory as well. This month’s Creative Cookie Exchange theme is cheese so I thought it was a great time to test my theory. I am pleased to report that while it feels funny calling these cookies, shortbread is definitely considered a cookie, so here we are. And they are delicious! They are rich and buttery, with a lovely hint of heat from the black pepper and cayenne. They can stand up to a strong drink as well a good cup of tea.

Ingredients
1/2 cup or 113g unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
8 oz or 225g extra-sharp cheddar cheese, grated
2 tablespoons finely minced chives or green onion tops
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
Pinches paprika to decorate, optional

Method
In your electric mixer, beat together your butter, salt, black pepper and cayenne until you have a smooth paste.



Add in the cheese, flour and chives and mix at low speed until they form a soft dough.



Shape the dough into roll, wrap in plastic wrap or waxed paper, and chill 30 minutes.



Preheat the oven to 350°F or 180°C and line your baking sheet with parchment or a silicone mat.

Unwrap the roll and slice the shortbread into circles about 1/4 in or 1/2cm thick. Place on your prepared baking sheets leaving space around for them to spread. I put mine a bit close together thinking I might fit them all on one pan and ended up needing a second pan for the balance of six cookies. Learn from my errors and just space them more evenly on two pans to start with.



Sprinkle on a little paprika to decorate, if desired. You can use cayenne or black pepper instead but I was afraid mine might be too spicy for my taste testers.


Bake the shortbread until lightly golden and beginning to brown on edges, about 10-12 mins.

I decided that I didn’t like the rough edges for a civilized teatime treat with Manzanilla sherry so I cut them out with a glass to even the edges. This is a totally unnecessarily step, but they do look nicer, don’t they? And we loved the little toasted crumbs that were left behind.



Enjoy!



Check out all the other lovely cheesy cookies my Creative Cookie Exchange friends have made. Many thanks to Renee of Magnolia Days for doing all the behind the scenes work this month!


Creative Cookie Exchange is hosted by Laura of The Spiced Life. 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!

Pin it! 

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Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Slow Cooker Cocoa Peanut Butter Oat Cookies #CreativeCookieExchange

Chewy, crunchy and more-ish, these no bake slow cooker cookies are made with cocoa, peanut butter and whole rolled oats. They will have you reaching for just one more, until they are gone.

Despite my participation in the last Creative Cookie Exchange no-bake challenge in 2014 when I made Kashata Squares from Uganda, I am a neophyte at no bake cookie making.

This time I got my head in the game and hunted high and low with two recipe goals in mind. 1. It should be easy. Some weeks I’m close to in over my head and no bake could not mean complicated. 2. It should be tasty. I was hoping for something with peanut butter. I’m not much of a sweet eater but I do love the sweet and salty combination that peanut butter brings to a cookie.

This recipe on Moms With Crockpots fits both bills. Of course, my slow cooker is not an official Crockpot®, which is a registered trademark, so while changing up the method somewhat, I also changed the name.

These guys couldn’t be easier. Set your slow cooker on high and make a dent in your to-do list.

Ingredients
1 3/4 cups or 350g sugar
4 tablespoons baking cocoa
1/2 cup or 120ml milk, warmed slightly
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup or 113g unsalted butter – melted and cooled
3 cups or 300g old fashioned rolled oats (Mine are called Scottish jumbo!)
1/2 cup or 140g crunchy peanut butter

Method
In the base of your slow cooker, before you turn it on, mix together the sugar, cocoa, milk, butter and vanilla. I say to warm the milk first (just 20 -30 seconds in the microwave will do) because, in my experience, cold milk makes melted butter seize up again. We don't want that.



Pour oats on top of the chocolatey syrupy mixture. Spoon peanut butter in the middle on top of the oats. Don't mix them in!



Place the lid on your slow cooker and cook on high for 1 hour 15 minutes or until the cocoa mixture reaches a good boil around the edges. Resist opening it to look before your timer buzzes. Lifting the lid releases a lot of heat and it takes a while for your slow cooker to get back up to temperature. The peanut butter isn’t going to sink in (at least mine didn’t) but you do want it to soften in the heat.

You can see that it's bubbling!

Stir well. I mean, really well. You want the peanut butter mixed thoroughly throughout.



Use a cookie scoop to place your cookies on a clean heat resistant surface covered in baking parchment.

I don’t know if my 2-tablespoon scoop is smaller than the original recipe but I got 31 full scoops and one half scoop, way more that the two dozen promised.

Allow cookies to set for a few hours and then store in a sealed container, layers divided by parchment. (Cut up the pieces your cookies cooled on and reuse.) If it’s hot where you live, you might want to chill your cookies. Mine set perfectly but the bottoms were still a little sticky.



Many thanks to Karen of Karen’s Kitchen Stories and Renee of Magnolia Days for doing our behind-the-scenes organizing this month. It’s much appreciated!

Just in time for the heat of summer, another round of no bake cookies! Forget turning the oven on, we’ve got you covered.

Creative Cookie Exchange is hosted by Laura of The Spiced Life. 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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Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Rhubarb Sauce Cookies #CreativeCookieExchange

Rhubarb sauce cookies make the most of tart spring rhubarb in the most deliciously portable way. Their subtle pink hints at the lovely rhubarb flavor inside. 

I’m pretty sure I might have told part of this story before, but when we lived in Paris 20-odd years ago, on a visit in our last year there my sharp-eyed mother-in-law pointed out that we had rhubarb growing in the front garden. It was hiding under some other big green leafy bushes. Life is full of small regrets and that I missed two springs of fresh homegrown rhubarb is one of mine.

Since then I’ve tried to make up for it by buying rhubarb when I can. It makes me think of Fiona, she of celebrated wheat bread and sausage roll fame, and I know she’d like these cookies. This month’s Creative Cookie Exchange theme is Mothers Day so, while Fiona was not my actual mother, or even my husband’s mother, she treated her stepson like a son and me like a daughter. Like most grandmothers, she thought our girls were such fun to spend time with and she was especially good at making storybooks come alive. They loved it when she did "voices." Her classroom full of students were all her beloved children and they'd come back regularly to visit long after they had moved on. She was a special lady.

Ingredients – Makes 2 1/2 dozen
1/2 cup or 115g butter
1 cup or 200 sugar
1 large egg
2 cups or 250g flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup or 190g thick rhubarb sauce

For the rhubarb sauce:
Grated zest and juice of 1 orange
12 oz or 340g rhubarb
1/8 cup or 25g sugar – or more to taste
Good pinch salt

Optional for serving: powdered sugar

Method
Trim the ends off the rhubarb, cut into chunks. Combine with the sugar and the orange zest and juice in a pan and gently cook for 5-10 minutes until the rhubarb begins to soften.

Cook a bit longer, until some of the juice has evaporated. You want a nice thick spoonable sauce. Set aside to cool.

Note: You won't use it all of the sauce in this recipe since it makes more than one cup. Stir the balance through some yogurt or serve it on pancakes. Its bright fresh taste will have you making the sauce again just to eat.

Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare your cookie sheet by lining it with baking parchment or silicone liners.

Whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, ginger and salt in a mixing bowl. Whisking brings in air, much as sifting does so you can sift them together if you prefer.

In a larger bowl, cream together butter and sugar until they are light yellow and fluffy. Add in the egg and beat again until blended.



Add in the rhubarb sauce and mix till blended.

Now beat in the flour mixture briefly until just blended. Don't over beat.



Drop by spoonfuls or a cookie scoop, onto your prepared cookie sheet.

Bake for 10-12 minutes or until the first batch is just starting to turn golden around the edges.

Leave to cool on the pan for a few minutes, then remove to a wire rack to cool completely. Repeat until all the cookies are baked.



Once cool, sprinkle with a little powdered sugar, if desired.



Enjoy!

Needing some inspiration for Mothers Day? We've got some lovely cookies for you!




Creative Cookie Exchange is hosted by Laura of The Spiced Life. 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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Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Egyptian Date Crescents #CreativeCookieExchange

These melt-in-your-mouth shortbread crescents are filled with sweet and sticky dates then covered in powdered sugar. 

My Creative Cookie Exchange group is celebrating spring around the world today, with recipes for Easter, Purim, Passover and more. Searching online for cookie recipes is often a rabbit hole of no return, but I managed come back this time with these Egyptian date crescents that the author said she and her mother always made for her father for Easter.  In fact, Easter is celebrated in a big way in Egypt, which surprised me when we lived in Cairo. The Coptic Christians are a minority, but they are a very vocal and visible influence in life there, where they live side by side, for the most part quite peaceably, with their Muslim neighbors.

Adapted from What She’s Having.

Ingredients - makes 2 dozen cookies
7 oz or 200g whole dates
2 cups or 250g flour
1 cup or 225g  butter at room temp, cut into pieces
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup or 60ml cold milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup or 94g powdered sugar

Method
In a small bowl, cover the dates with hot but not boiling water and set aside.

Using a pastry blender to combine the butter and flour and salt until they form large crumbles and there are no large pieces of butter.

Add the vanilla to the milk. Then add the milk to the butter and flour.



Stir until well combined. The dough is going to be quite sticky. If you live in a warm climate, wrap in cling film and leave to rest in the refrigerator for about 10-15 minutes. Don’t leave it too long or the butter will stiffen up and the dough will no longer be pliable.

Drain the dates and remove the pits and any little stemmy bits on the one end.

Use a sharp knife to chop the dates finely. Use the edge of the knife to make a square out of the date paste and cut it into 24 pieces.



Preheat your oven to 400°F or 200°C and prepare two cookie sheets by lining them with baking parchment or silicone liners.

Cut the dough into 24 squares.


Taking one square at a time, form it into a ball.



Press the center of the ball down to create an indent and press it out into an oval. Place one piece of the dates into the middle.






Close the dough up over the dates.



Roll the dough gently between your hand to lengthen it. Bend into a crescent.



Place on your prepared cookie sheet.



Bake for 10-15 minutes, until the bottom of the cookies are just golden. Let cool completely.


Roll in icing sugar.



Enjoy!




Check out all the lovely spring cookies we are sharing today!


Creative Cookie Exchange is hosted by Laura of The Spiced Life, this month with technical assistance from Anshie of Spiceroots. 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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Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Pineapple Macadamia Nut Shortbread #CreativeCookieExchange

Candied pineapple and macadamia nuts bring a little tropical flair to traditional, rich buttery shortbread.

This month my Creative Cookie Exchange friends are channeling the tropics to bring you cookies that remind us of sun and surf and swaying palms trees. And I got to reminiscing about a long ago holiday to Hawaii.

When I was still in school and my father moved to southeast Asia, he used to book tickets for my sisters and me to visit him from Texas. No one flew that far in one go at the time so there were several stops. Often one of the layovers was in Hawaii so we’d break up the trip by staying a few days on Waikiki. One year I was going to be traveling on my own so I twisted a friend’s arm (hard task, right?) to come with me. Her father worked for Delta so her ticket was heavily discounted and since Daddy was already paying for the hotel room, all she needed was spending money. We had the best time, hanging out on the beach and soaking up the sun together.

I’ll tell you honestly that while we ate our share of pineapple there, both at breakfast time and perched on tropical cocktails, I don’t recall trying a macadamia nut until years later. Nevertheless both pineapples and macadamias have become synonymous with Hawaii. And they go beautifully together in buttery shortbread.

Adapted from Recipe.com

Ingredients
2 1/2 cups or 315g all-purpose flour
1/3 cup packed or 65g brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup or 227g cold butter
1/4 cup finely chopped or 30g macadamia nuts
1/4 cup finely chopped or 50g candied pineapple

Method
Preheat your oven to 325°F or 163°C and prepare a 8 x 8 in or 20 x 20cm pan by lining it completely with baking parchment. I also use a little non-stick spray just to help it stay in place.

Chop your pineapple and nuts into small pieces.



In a large mixing bowl, combine your flour, brown sugar and salt.

Cut the cold butter into pieces and add them to the mixing bowl. Use a pastry blender to cut in the butter, until the mixture resembles fine crumbs.



Stir in the chopped candied pineapple and nuts. Use your fingers to break up the bits of pineapple so they aren’t all stuck together.



Pour the mixture into your prepared pan and level it out with a spatula or spoon.

Use your hands to press and flatten the mixture as thin as you can manage.



Use a sharp knife to score the top of the shortbread. If it crumbles as you try to score it, press it down again, even more firmly. You can poke 'em with a fork if you want to also. That seems traditional for shortbread.



Bake in your preheated oven for about 18-22 minutes or until the edges are starting to turn golden.

Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the pan for just a few minutes on a wire rack. While the it's still quite warm, use the sharp knife to cut right through the shortbread where you scored it.

Allow to cool completely before removing the shortbread cookies from the pan.

These are melt in your mouth good.


Enjoy!

Check out all the other tropical cookies from my fellow Creative Cookie Exchange bakers this month:


Creative Cookie Exchange is hosted by Laura of The Spiced Life, this month with technical assistance from Renee of Magnolia Days. 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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