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!
Showing posts with label cookies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cookies. Show all posts
Saturday, 28 June 2014
Saturday, 24 August 2013
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!
I’ve based my recipe on a chocolate and walnut cookie recipe by famous patissier Francois Payard.
Saturday, 17 November 2012
Spiced rum, crimson raisin and dark chocolate cookies
Chocolate Smarties cookies
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
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
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
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