Love cookies

Here are some super easy heart cookies I made for my work colleagues to celebrate Valentine's Day. You can use any colour combinations, or any shape - such a fun recipe to play around with. If you want to make some here's what you need:

Ingredients (makes about 30 medium sized cookies):

• 120g dark chocolate, broken into pieces
• 650g plain flour
• 250g unsalted butter, softened
• 2 tbsp skimmed milk
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 2 medium eggs
• 300g caster sugar
• Pink food colouring (optional)

Method:
Melt chocolate in a bowl over a pan of gently simmering water or in the microwave. Be careful not to cook the chocolate!

In a large bowl, combine the flour, eggs, butter, milk, baking powder and caster sugar. Beat the ingredients until well-blended with an electric mixer or spoon, occassionally scraping the bowl with the rubber spatula. Take out half the dough and colour with pink food colouring (or leave plain if you want). Roll the dough into a ball, wrap in cling film then refrigerate until the dough is firm enough to handle (normally about an hour, or 20 mins ni the freezer).
 
Mix the melted chocolate into the remaining dough until blended. Roll the dough into a ball, wrap in cling film and refrigerate until firm.
 
In the meantime, preheat the oven to 180C (350F) and line 2 large baking trays with baking paper. Once the dough is firm enough to work with, roll it out on a lightly floured surface with a rolling pin and use a medium-sized heart cutter to make pink and brown hearts. Remove the centres of the hearts with a slightly smaller heart cutter, then fill them again with the opposite coloured small heart.  Place the cookies on the baking trays a few centimetres apart to allow for spreading, then bake for about 10 minutes or until lightly golden. Transfer the cookies to a wire rack to cool before eating. You can store any leftover cookies in an airtight container for about 2 weeks.....

Happy Baking xx

Message in a Cookie

I am completely in love with my new purchase from Williams-Sonoma - message-in-a-cookie cutters.

The kit contains 3 plastic cutters and 7 pre-made words (Welcome, Happy, Birthday, Holidays, Thank You, From, I Love You), 3 sets of alphabet letters and some extra vowels and other commonly used letters.

One of my friends was recently in an accident so I thought these cutters would be a great way to send him wishes for a speedy recovery. I made chocolate sugar cookies then embossed them with 'Get well soon'. Here's how they turned out:

and the rest of them......

You can serve the cookies plain, or embellish them with piped royal icing designs or flowers, as I did.

Happy baking x

Easter cookies

I've been busy baking cookies over Easter. Here are some of the finished ones......

Easter lambs decorated with sugar paste


To make these lambs, attach sugar paste to a cooled cookie with warmed apricot jam, then use a dresden tool to texture the sugar paste. Add sugar paste bows or flowers if desired (attaching them with a little bit of water), then draw eyes and nose on with an edible food pen. Sugar paste is a great medium to use to decorate cookies. Lindy Smith's book 'Bake me I'm yours cookie' has heaps of great examples of cookies deocrated with sugar paste if you want some more inspiration. I love this book and can highly recommend it.

Easter cookies make a great gift, especially when wrapped up in cellophane with Easter eggs....

Yum!

Bunnies, eggs and chicks

A quick way to decorate lots of cookies, is by using royal icing. Here I used different pastel coloured royal icing to flood each cookie, then once the cookies had dried I piped on top of them.

Happy Easter x

Hot Cross Bun Cookies

These have to be some of the cutest cookies ever.....and they taste just like hot cross buns.



They are really easy to make and a perfect treat to bake for Easter. Here's what you need:

Ingredients (makes 36)
125g unsalted butter (softened and chopped)
2/3 cup caster sugar
1 large egg
1/4 cup mixed peel (roughly chopped)
1/2 cup dried currants
2 cups self raising flour
1 tsp mixed spice
2 tsp skim milk
2 tbsp ground almond meal
50g marzipan
2 tbsp apricot jam (warmed)

Method
Preheat oven to 140C (fan forced). Beat butter, sugar and egg in bowl with electric mixer until mixture is light and fluffy. Stir in peel, currants, sifted flour, mixed spice and milk until everything is well-combined. Roll teaspoons of mixture into balls and place them on a lined baking tray about 4cm apart. Knead almond meal into marzipan then roll the marzipan into thin sausages and cut into lengths about the size of the diameter of the cookies. Brush the cookies with milk then place the marzipan crosses on top. Bake the cookies for about 15 minutes until slightly brown. While the cookies are still hot, brush warm apricot jam onto them to make them shiny. Store cookies in an airtight container to retain freshness.

Happy Easter

National Cookie Competition - Last Round

The final round of the National Cookie Competition was last week and the theme was 'lemon'. I spent a while trying out ideas, but eventually settled for lemon shortbread cookies with chocolate and basil buttercream.

I know the combination of basil with chocolate sounds a bit strange, but it actually tastes divine. Try it out for yourself:

Cookies
350g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
140g unsalted butter at room temperature (and cut into small pieces)
175g caster sugar
Juice from 1 lemon
2 eggs (lightly beaten)

Buttercream
250g unsalted butter
1 cupsifted icing sugar
2 tbsp skim milk
50g dark chocolate (melted and allowed to cool)
50g milk chocolate (melted and allowed to cool)
1/2 tbsp finely ground basil
1 tsp vanilla essence

To make the cookies, preheat the oven to 200C. Sift the flour, baking soda and baking powder into a bowl. Next, add the butter and use your fingers to combine the mixture together until it ressembles fine bread crumbs. Stir in the sugar, lemon juice and eggs until the mixture becomes a soft dough. Shape dough into really small balls and place them onto lined baking trays, making sure that there is space between each cookie to allow for spreading during baking. Flatten the balls into discs once on the tray using your fingers or a spoon. Bake in the oven for about 15 minutes or until the cookies are golden brown. Allow them to cool completely on a wire tray before icing.

To make the buttercream, beat the butter with an electric mixer until light and fluffy (normally takes about 5 minutes). Next add the milk and vanilla essence and beat until well combined. Mix in the melted chocolate, then add the icing sugar slowly, being sure to mix it in well after each addition. Lastly add the basil and give it a final mix. Pipe the buttercream onto one cookie then sandwich it onto another cookie of equal size. Dust the tops of the cookies with cocoa powder if desired. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to one week.

I've really enjoyed being part of the national cookie network over the last 5 months. Thanks to everyone who has provided such nice comments on my monthly creations.

Happy baking x

National Cookie Challenge - November Entry

The theme for the November round of the National Cookie Network Baking Challenge was cranberries, so I attempted to turn my favourite cocktail - Vodka, Cranberry and Lime - into a cookie. Although the cookies may not look as exciting as a cocktail, they taste delicious, and are super easy to make.

Here's the recipe if you want to have a go at making them:

Vodka, Cranberry and Lime Cookies

Ingredients (makes 20 large or 35 small cookies)

• 265g softened unsalted butter
• 1 cup icing sugar (sifted)
• 1 1/2 cups plain flour
• 175g dried cranberries
• zest and juice from 1 lime
• 1/2 cup vodka

Method

Preheat oven to 175C. Pour vodka into a bowl and add cranberries. Allow them to soak until all the vodka has been absorbed. In the meantime, using an electric mixer, beat butter and icing sugar together until smooth and fluffy. Add flour and continue mixing until the dough is formed. Sitr in zest and juice of lime and vodka soaked cranberries. Place small balls of mixture onto lined baking trays, then bake for about 10 mins until they are just start to turn golden. Cool on wire racks (cookies harden when cool), and store in an airtight container to retain freshness.

Happy Baking x

National Cookie Challenge - September Entry

Today I entered the National Cookie Network Baking Challenge, an online international cookie competition, where each month, competitors have to make a cookie based on a "secret ingredient", then post their recipe and a photo of their entry onto the national cookie network forum for judging. This month, the secret ingredient was "Strawberry". I had a lot of fun coming up with ideas for cookies, but settled on the following recipe as my entry:

Mascarpone Cookies Filled With Strawberry Ganache

Cookies
115g butter (softened)
1 cup caster sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. almond extract
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp. baking soda
Dash salt
1/2 cup mascarpone cheese (room temp)
1 egg
2 & 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

Filling
1 cup fresh strawberries
2 tsp. caster sugar
120g white chocolate

Preheat oven to 175C. Beat butter with an electric mixer on medium speed for 1 min in a large mixing bowl. Gradually add caster sugar, baking powder, nutmeg, baking soda and a salt. Continue beating the mixture until it is combined, scraping the side of bowl occasionally. Mix in mascarpone cheese, vanilla and almond extracts, and egg. Then beat in as much of the flour as you can with the mixer. Once it is too thick to use the beaters, use a wooden spoon to stir in any remaining flour. Wrap the dough in plastic and refrigerate for at least an hour or until dough is easy to handle.

On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough and use cookie cutters (I used 3-inch fluted circles) to cut out the dough. Use a smaller cutter (I used a small heart) to cut out the centre of half of the cookies. Place cookies on a line baking tray and bake until edges start to brown (5-7mins depending on oven). Transfer cookies to a wire rack to cool.

Puree the strawberries and mix in the caster sugar. Strain the puree through a sieve to remove seeds. Melt chocolate in a bowl over a pot of simmering water, stirring continuously to prevent the chocolate from burning. Remove the chocolate from the heat and stir in the strawberry puree. Cover with plastic wrap and cool to room temperature.

To assemble the cookies, spread the flat side of each whole cookie with a teaspoon of the ganache. Top with a cutout cookie, and dust with icing sugar if desired. Cookies store well in an airtight container at room temperature for up to a week.

Happy Baking x