Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Cream Cheese Filled Orange Cookies #CreativeCookieExchange


Sweetened cream cheese, spiked with Grand Marnier, makes the perfect filling for a fresh orange pecan cookie sandwich, topped with orange glaze and sprinkled with more pecans. This cookie has three components but all are easy to make and easy to assemble, making a showpiece cookie you’d be pleased to serve, even at a fancy luncheon.

This month’s Creative Cookie Exchange challenge is sandwich cookies, which leaves the flavors and fillings wide open to a combination of ingredients. This is the sort of challenge I love. I considered all kinds of crazy combinations before coming back to one I knew would work. Cream cheese and fresh oranges. I wanted a cookie that crumbled rather than smooshed like cake when bitten into, and a filling that was sweet but with a bite to complement the crunchy cookie. And the pecans? Well, if you’ve been reading along here a while, you know I love to add pecans whenever possible. These cookies are sweet, without being too sweet, if you know what I mean.

Many thanks to Laura of The Spiced Life who is in charge of this great group. Make sure you scroll on down past the recipe to see how my fellow Creative Cookie Exchange members navigated this cookie sandwich challenge.

Ingredients for 12-18 sandwich cookies (depending on how thin you slice them before baking)
For the cookies:
1/2 cup or 115g butter, softened
1/4 cup or 50g sugar
1/4 cup, firmly packed, or 50g brown sugar
1 egg
Grated zest of 1 orange
1 tablespoon fresh orange juice (Save the rest for the glaze.)
1 1/4 cup or 190g flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/4 cup chopped pecans, or 160g divided
(1/4 cup or 35g in dough, rest for rolling dough in.)

For the filling:
4 oz or 115g cream cheese, slightly oftened
1/4 cup or 60g butter, slightly softened
1 teaspoon Grand Marnier
1 1/4 cups or 160g powdered sugar

For the orange glaze:
½ cup or 60g confectioners’ sugar
3-4 teaspoons fresh orange juice

Method
Cream butter and sugars together, beating until light and fluffy. Add the egg, orange zest and juice and beat well.


Add in the flour, salt and baking soda and beat till fully combined.



Now add in 1/4 cup or 35g of the chopped pecans and beat again till incorporated.



Cover your work space with a large piece of cling film and sprinkle on the remaining chopped pecans.

Use a scoop or spoon to make one line of dough along the beginning of the pecans.


Use the cling film to roll the dough in the pecans and smooth the dough into a round log.


Once the dough log is covered, roll it to one side of the cling film and gather the remaining pecan pieces into a bowl and set aside. We’ll use some of them for decorating the cookies later.


Roll the log up as tightly as you can manage in the cling film and transfer it to a pan or cutting board and put it in the refrigerator to chill for at least three hours, until it is firm.

When you are ready to bake, preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare your baking trays by lining them with parchment or silicone baking mats.

Remove half the dough log at a time from the refrigerator, slice it into circles and place them on your prepared cookies sheets.



I cut mine a bit thick and ended up with about 26 slices, which seemed like a goodly number until I remembered that I was making sandwich cookies. Cut them a little thinner for more cookies.


Bake in the preheated oven for about 10-12 minutes or until the bottoms are golden brown.



Remove the cookies from the oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Make the filling and the glaze
To make the filling, beat all the ingredients together until smooth.

For the orange glaze, add fresh orange juice to the powdered sugar just a teaspoon at a time, until you reach a good consistency that runs a little but won’t pour off the cookies. You may not need all the orange juice.

Once the cookies are completely cool, turn them golden bottom up and spoon or pipe on enough filling on half of them to cover, about the same thickness as the cookies.



Top with the remaining cookies.

Spoon a little glaze on the top of each cookie and sprinkle with some of the leftover chopped pecans.

If your home is cool, these shouldn’t need chilling to set up. If you are in a warm climate, you will want to store the filled cookies in the refrigerator. This will make them less crunchy, but still delicious.



Enjoy!



Are you a sandwich cookie fan? Have a look at all of the wonderful cookies we have for you today!



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 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 at The Spiced Life). We post all together on the first Tuesday after the 15th of each month!

Posted by at 6:05:00 AM 0 comments
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Sunday, April 19, 2015

Minty Cardinal Punch


A cool refreshing beverage for summer time and outdoor picnics, this cocktail is full of mint and juice with the added touch of orange bitters. Leave out the vodka and add more ginger ale for a kid friendly version. 

If you’ve been reading along here for a while, you know that most Fridays will find us out in our Drascombe Longboat sailing around the channels and little islands offshore Abu Dhabi. We pack a picnic lunch that almost invariably includes sticky wings and snorkers in Thermoses. (Thermi?) In addition to the beer, cider and soft drinks in the cooler, occasionally we bring along a jug of rum punch, essential on Trafalgar Day, or Bloody Marys or Pimm’s. But mint has completely taken over my flowerbeds, so last weekend, I mixed up a batch of this cardinal punch.

There are a thousand recipes for cardinal punch on the interwebs, some calling for red wine, others for cranberry juice but I used this one from Celebrations.com as my jumping off point. I couldn’t find anything cranberry but drink in my nearby supermarket so I ended up substituting fresh, unsweetened pomegranate juice instead, for a very refreshing cocktail to sip on the beach.

Ingredients
Lots of mint - put more or less as your supply moves you
1 lemon
1 orange
2 cups or 480ml pomegranate or cranberry juice (not drink!)
1 cup or 240ml orange juice
1 oz or 30ml fresh lemon juice
2 cups or 480ml vodka
2 cups or 480ml ginger ale
Orange bitters
Ice

Method
Give your mint a good wash and spin to dry then pick the leaves off of the thick stems. It's so dusty here in Dubai that this step is essential.



Cut the lemon and orange into thin slices.



Mix your juices together in a big jug with the vodka.  Add the mint, some ice and the orange and lemon slices.


Finally, add in the ginger ale, a few generous shakes of the orange bitters and stir.


If you are transporting the drink to a picnic spot, pack the sliced citrus slices in an airtight container and put all the other ingredients into a clean bottle, except the ice, and pack some plastic cups. Mine fit into one 1.5 liter water bottle plus a little 330ml water bottle. Not sure why the orange bitters were still in the picture because I had already shaken quite a bit of that good stuff into the drink.


Keep the bottle in a cooler with ice and serve the drink glass by glass, adding ice and a slice each of orange and lemon then pouring in the punch. Make sure each glass gets some mint as well.



Enjoy!

Many thanks to T.R. of Gluten Free Crumbley for hosting this week’s Sunday Supper where we are having a huge virtual picnic!

Check out all the great picnic fare!

Appetizers:
Beverages:
Main Dishes:
Sides:
Soups and Salads:
Desserts:


Our favorite picnic spot on a little island we call HMS Log. That's Abu Dhabi city in the background.




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Garlicky Lobster Crab Scampi #NationalGarlicDay

Lots of garlic, butter and olive oil make this rich Garlicky Lobster Crab Scampi perfect for serving on a special occasion. Or when you just want to treat yourself. No lobster? Substitute shrimp or prawns!

Food Lust People Love: Lots of garlic, butter and olive oil make this rich Garlicky Lobster Crab Scampi perfect for serving on a special occasion. Or when you just want to treat yourself. No lobster? Substitute shrimp or prawns!


The summer I was eight years old, we moved from Trinidad to Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, a distance not far as the crow flies, the commercial flight taking only one hour and 20 minutes, but it was a dizzying transfer from a cozy oil field camp on a relatively provincial island to a quick paced city of high rise buildings and busy downtown streets where folks spoke a foreign tongue. And you had to know that language to read the signs, packaging in stores and to order safely from a menu. 

While our house was being readied for move-in, we stayed first in a high-rise hotel and then in a serviced apartment just a few blocks from an Italian restaurant called Da Pippo’s. We ate there several times a week. Funny how memories can be elusive, but I don’t really remember what I used to order. Perhaps it was something normal like pizza or spaghetti, so unremarkable that it escaped recording in my long-term brain cells, but my older sister was consistent.

She got the shrimp scampi every single time. It was loaded with garlic and butter and oil, shelled pink shrimp drowning in that nectar of delight. I don’t recall if she ever shared a shrimp, but sometimes she’d let me dip a piece of the complimentary bread in there. Heaven. 

Now you are probably asking yourself why I didn’t just order my own shrimp scampi and I wish I had a good answer for you. I do wonder that myself. But the good memories made sure that I have recreated that dish more than a few times over the intervening years. 

A little research corrected my misheld assumption that scampi was merely the Italian word for shrimp. It can also mean a dish prepared with garlic butter so occasionally, I vary the seafood, using lobster or crab alone or in combination with the shrimp. But there’s always plenty of garlic and butter and olive oil.

You might remember that last year about this time, I was celebrating National Garlic Day with my friend, Heather from girlichef, and 13 more garlic loving food bloggers. I made a slow roasted lamb shoulder with 40 cloves of garlic that just fell off the bones, it was so tender! Well, we are at it again! 

And I couldn’t think of a better recipe to share than one I created with Da Pippo's shrimp scampi in mind. Feel free to substitute shrimp for the lobster and/or the crab. And make sure you scroll down to see all the great garlicky recipes my friends have made for you today.

Ingredients for two very generous servings
1/4 cup or 60g butter
1/4 cup or 60ml olive oil
15 cloves or 60g garlic
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1/2 cup or 120ml dry white wine
1/2 - 1 teaspoon cayenne (depending on your taste)
1 tablespoon whole grain mustard
Juice of 1/2 lemon
12 1/3 oz or 350g lobster tail meat
1/2 cup or 110g fresh crabmeat
Sea salt to taste.

To serve: spinach fettuccine pasta, cooked to manufacturer’s instructions or some crusty bread, sliced, heaping your scampi on.

To garnish: Few sprigs cilantro or flat leaf parsley

Method
Melt the butter along with the olive oil in a large pan over medium heat. Mince your garlic and add it to the pan or push it through a garlic press directly into the melted butter and olive oil. Cook for a minute or two until fragrant. Be very careful not to let the garlic burn or it will turn bitter.



Whisk in the Worcestershire sauce, cayenne, whole grain mustard and white wine. Simmer for about five minutes.



Slice your lobster tail.

And add it to the sauce. Cook it just long enough for the meat to turn white, mere minutes.



Add in the crabmeat and cook until it is just warmed through.



Squeeze in the lemon juice and give everything a gentle stir.

Add salt to taste then serve over spinach pasta for extra color. Or alongside some fresh crusty bread.

Garnish with a few sprigs of cilantro or flat leaf parsley.

Food Lust People Love: Lots of garlic, butter and olive oil make this rich Garlicky Lobster Crab Scampi perfect for serving on a special occasion. Or when you just want to treat yourself. No lobster? Substitute shrimp or prawns!


Enjoy!


Welcome to National Garlic Day 2015, hosted by Heather from girlichef. April 19th is a day for garlic lovers far and wide to come together and celebrate the wonder of "the stinking rose." Whether it's the ability to ward off vampires (and bugs), its numerous health benefits, or the way it lends flavor to a dish, there are so many reasons for singing the praises of garlic.

To help you get in the mood, check out these garlicky good recipes from this year's National Garlic Day bloggers:




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