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

Saturday, 28 June 2014

Pistachio chocolate truffle-cookies

Pistachio chocolate truffle-cookies

A lovely couple called Rhian and James commissioned me to make them a chocolate and pistachio wedding cake just like the one I’d made for my friend Sarah.  James also confessed that he is a complete addict when it comes to cookies, and so I made them a great big batch of chocolate and pistachio cookies to go with the cake.  I’d planned to use my trusty recipe for this, but having finally used up the mountains of ingredients in my kitchen for the cake, I mistakenly assumed that all the chocolate that was left was for the cookies – forgetting entirely that I still had to make a large amount of chocolate ganache for the cake. It seemed like an awful lot of chocolate as I stirred it into the cookie dough, and so when I re-checked my cookie recipe, I realised that I had actually used three times the amount of chocolate.  Rather than starting again straight away (which would’ve meant going shopping for more ingredients) I decided to bake the cookie dough I’d made and see if it worked – after all, what harm does extra chocolate do anything?  It was a mistake that paid off – these are without doubt, the best cookies I have ever made.  There is so much chocolate that they are almost held together by it – they become more like chocolate truffles with some cookie dough in – but they are unbelievably good.  The bride and groom emailed me after the wedding to say what a huge hit they had been and that they’d struggled to get James away from them.  Sometimes mistakes are the best form of invention!

Saturday, 24 August 2013

Pomegranate molasses cookies

Pomegranate molasses cookies

These cookies were an experiment to try using pomegranate molasses in baking. It's got an amazing but really unusual flavour - an almost sweet and sour tang - so I added some lemon zest, spices (cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg) and sweetened it with a little cocoa and white and milk chocolate chips. 

Sunday, 27 January 2013

Chocolate truffle cookies


Since Christmas we've had a small box of milk chocolate truffles in the cupboard and miraculously they've not been eaten. This has to be a record in my house, as I normally can't resist scoffing all the chocolate in sight, on sight! I decided to roughly chop them up and turn them into cookies - a good way to make them go a long way, and producing the most decadent chocolatey cookies ever. Unlike the box of chocolates, these definitely won't last long in our house!

Sunday, 13 January 2013

Giant chocolate button cookies


Our friends Emma and Geraint and their two little ones have just moved back to our home town.  It's so nice to have them round the corner!  We popped in today to welcome them to their new home and I made them a batch of these cookies as a house-warming present. The recipe is based on a Millie's Cookies recipe on the BBC Good Food website, and I used some brilliant giant chocolate buttons, but it would be just as good with ordinary chocolate chips or chunks of your favourite bar.

Monday, 24 December 2012

Flourless chocolate, hazelnut, macadamia and cranberry cookies


Another flourless recipe for my sister – this time, rich dark chocolate cookies for Christmas, loaded with hazelnuts, macadamia nuts and dried cranberries.  They are lovely and soft and cakey, more like brownies than biscuits – really good served warm with a scoop of my Christmas Pudding Ice Cream!


Saturday, 17 November 2012

Spiced rum, crimson raisin and dark chocolate cookies


This is my take on that classic flavour combination, rum and raisin. The addition of allspice to the dough plus some big chunks of Bourneville dark chocolate makes this taste like Old Jamaica chocolate - it would be lovely to use that with this recipe too. It'd also be nice with dried cranberries, but the crimson raisins I used have an equally jewel-like red colour. These are deliciously Christmassy and indulgent and morish!

Chocolate Smarties cookies


The shops are filling up with Christmas chocolates. Unable to resist, I bought a big tube of Smarties the other day, and decided to use them to make a batch of cookies. These are also irresistable!

Wednesday, 7 November 2012

OBAMA rocks! cakes


What an amazing US election result last night! To celebrate Obama's second term in office, I decided to make something with ingredients that spelled out OBAMA (a habit I've got into what with my ABC cake (Apple, Blueberry and Cinnamon), BMW bread (Banana, Mango and Walnut), and more recent BANG cake (Banana, Amaretto, Nut and Ginger)...). These started life as cookies but I soon realised that they tasted just like the rock cakes my mum used to make with us on Sunday afternoons as kids. So rather than flattening small scoops of the dough into cookie shapes, I instead dolloped big scoops onto the baking tray and left them to come out as rock cakes. I made one dough but split it into two batches before adding the different OBAMA fruit and nuts. The first batch contained Oats, Blueberries, Apple, Macadamia and Almonds. The second batch contained Oats, Banana, Apricot, Mango and Almonds. The result: OBAMA rocks! [cakes]


Friday, 2 November 2012

Nutty ginger beer cookies


We're off to Cornwall this weekend to stay in a country house with some old friends. I decided to make some ginger nut biscuits (these contain ground almonds, walnuts and are each topped with a whole pecan) but in a moment of madness/ inspiration I added a good glug of Crabbie's alcoholic ginger beer. It worked brilliantly, adding to the light, soft texture and adding extra oomph to the gingeriness, along with chopped crystallised ginger.

Saturday, 6 October 2012

Pistachio and dark chocolate cookies


I woke up really early this morning, dreaming of these cookies. The thought made my mouth water so much I ended up getting up and getting straight to baking! These are lovely chewy, gooey cookies choc full of big chunks of Bourneville dark chocolate and toasted, chopped pistachios. What better way to start a Saturday?

Wednesday, 26 September 2012

Ginger and milk chocolate chunk cookies


This recipe is a mixture of the ginger biscuits I made a couple of days ago and my dark chocolate ginger cookies – this time adding chunks of milk chocolate and a little drinking chocolate rather than dark cocoa powder. These are a delicious combination of warm and spicy ginger with gooey, oozing milk chocolate. They disappear fast!

Tuesday, 26 June 2012

Double dark chocolate shortbread cookies


Today I made two batches of shortbread cookies - the first were peanut butter milk choc chip ones, and these are double dark chocolate - loaded with cocoa powder and chunks of dark chocolate. I used Cadbury's Bournville, which is my favourite dark chocolate - so dark and bitter it makes quite a grown-up, truffly cookie. These are absolutely amazing, I promise!

Peanut butter milk choc chip shortbread cookies


OMG. These are amazingly good, melt-in-your-mouth, salty, sweet, chocolately, peanutty shortbread cookies. They are also incredibly easy and quick to make. You stick the dough in the fridge for an hour or so and when you're ready to bake they take no time at all to produce delicious, crumbly, soft cookies full of flavour. Even if you're not a big fan of peanut butter (and I'm not especially, normally) you will LOVE these, I promise!

Thursday, 21 June 2012

Lemon Earl Grey cookies


These are lovely crumbly cookies with fragrant flavours of Earl Grey tea and lemon.

Monday, 11 June 2012

Kitchen sink cookies


These cookies are so-called because you can chuck in any mixture of chocolate, nuts and dried fruit you have in your cupboards.  I used a mixture of Galaxy chocolate (milk and cookie crumble), toasted macadamias and pecans, dried cranberries and natural glace cherries.  You could substitute this for anything else - white chocolate, dark chocolate, crystallised ginger, pistachios, peanuts, hazelnuts, dried apricots, pears, peaches, fudge, mini marshmallows... These are lovely chewy, soft cookies and will disappear quickly!

Friday, 13 April 2012

Pear and crystallised ginger cookies


This is the same basic recipe as my peach, pecan and cinnamon cookies, but with dried pear and crystallised ginger.  The mixture makes about 30 cookies so if you like you could divide it in half after stage 4 and make two different batches.

Peach, pecan and cinnamon cookies


We're off to our friend Liz's hen party today and so I've made a couple of different cookie recipes to take along.  This one uses dried peaches that I bought at our local farmer's market recently, which gives them a lovely flavour and nice chewy bits!  Rolled in sugar, the cookies have a lovely twinkly crust.

Sunday, 5 February 2012

White chocolate coffee cookies


These cookies are made with instant coffee powder, straight into the dough without diluting with hot water.  It melts a little in the baking, and the smaller the granules the better - although you still get a little pop of coffee hit when they're baked!  

Thursday, 18 August 2011

Dark chocolate and ginger cookies


These are brilliant for dunking or on their own - the kind of cookie that deserves to be made BIG!

Cranberry and white chocolate cookies


These are delicious dunked, and probably worth making two batches at once as they disappear so quickly