Chocolate orange cookies

Having had the girls over for a girly evening (complete with chocolate and raspberry brownies, lemon polenta cake, gossip and Coyote Ugly!), they left at about 11.00 on Sunday morning and I realised that I was out for a late lunch for a friend’s birthday, so I should whip up something quick and tasty as a small gift.

I didn’t have the time or energy to make anything too extravagant, so when I found orange-flavoured dark chocolate in the cupboard, I decided that I could make some quick and delicious chocolate orange cookies. These cookies are usually made with 450g of dark chocolate, so it was easy to replace with the orange-flavoured dark chocolate. I only had 300g of this, so I added 100g milk chocolate and 50g of chopped up orange matchmakers!  You could probably also make with all orange-flavoured milk chocolate (but they may be a little too sweet), or all dark chocolate, but I think the mix worked particularly well. I also replaced the vanilla extract in the original recipe with the zest of an orange.

I’ve added a rest stage for the cookie mixture into my method below. I didn’t do this when I made these cookies and, as you can see from the picture, they spread out too much and so were a bit thin (but still delicious!). I didn’t fit all of the mixture onto my baking trays, so had to do a second batch (of 3) once the first were cooked. This batch stayed much thicker and so I have added the rest stage in!  

Overall, I’m not generally a big chocolate fan, but these are absolutely delicious! Rich, chewy, chocolatey, with a nice fresh orangey zing! They’d make fantastic Christmas presents. EHH loved these and so I’ll definitely be making these again.

Chocolate orange cookies

(makes 12-14 large cookies)

Ingredients

1. 50g butter
2. 350g orange flavoured dark chocolate, roughly chopped
3. 100g milk chocolate, roughly chopped
4. 2 eggs
5. 170g soft light brown sugar
6.  Zest of one orange
7. 85g plain flour
8. ½ tsp baking powder

Recipe

1. Line 2 baking trays with baking parchment.
2. Put the butter, the milk chocolate and half of the orange-flavoured dark chocolate in a heat-proof bowl.
3. Place the bowl over a saucepan of simmering water and stir gently until the chocolate and butter are melted and combined.
4. Beat the eggs, sugar and orange zest in a bowl until frothy.
5. Pour in the chocolate mixture, beating on a slow speed until combined.
6. Sift the flour and baking powder into a separate bowl.
7. In three additions, stir the chocolate mixture into the flour.
8. Stir in the remaining chocolate.
9. Leave for 20-30 minutes to allow the mixture to firm up a bit.
10. Pre-heat the oven to 170C.
11. Dollop the cookie mixture onto the two prepared baking trays, allowing plenty of room between each, as the cookies will spread.
12. Bake for 10 – 15 minutes, until the top of the cookies start to crack, the sides of the cookies are firm but the centre still fairly squidgy.
13. Remove from the oven and allow to cool on the tray for 10 minutes.
14. Turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

     

Strawberry and white chocolate macaroons

Wow – ok, first post of 2013!  Start of this year has been a bit manic and so I’m a bit behind on writing things up. Hopefully things have calmed down a bit now!

Last week was a friend’s birthday and I wanted to do a few fab things for her.  I decided that I hadn’t made macaroons in absolutely ages so fancied giving them a go again. My friend has always loved the apple cakes that I have made in the past so decided to also make a batch of apple and cinnamon cupcakes – recipe and photos to follow in next blog post.

As mentioned, I haven’t made macaroons in months and months.  I first made them just over a year ago – fancying a challenge.  They are quite fiddly and you do need to be very precise - but they are definitely worth the effort for a special occasion. I did loads of research and ended up going with Brave Tart’s recipe and suggestions – partly because she uses a KitchenAid.  She has loads of great suggestions on how to make macaroons – which tips are essential and which are purely myths.  Although I have to admit that I do stick with a few things she says aren’t essential – here's my version.

Macaroons

Ingredients

1. 115g ground almonds
2. 230g icing sugar*
3. 144g egg whites (about 4 large eggs), at room temperature
4. 72g granulated sugar
5. 1/2 tsp salt
6. Small amount paste food colouring

Method

1. Trace out 3.5 guide-circles (at least 3cm apart) onto baking parchment and then flip it over, ink side down.  I use one of my large piping tips, but a small cookie cutter or large bottle lid could also work.
2. Prepare a large piping bag, fitted with a medium round  tip.
3. Line two  baking trays lined with the prepared baking parchment.
4. Sieve the icing sugar into a bowl.
5. Sieve the ground almonds into the same bowl – discard any bits that don’t go through the sieve (make sure that you have the correct weight in the bowl after sieving).
6. Combine the egg whites, sugar and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer.
7. Turn the mixer to medium (4 on a Kitchen Aid) and whisk for 3 minutes. The mix will not seem especially foamy at that point.
8. Increase the speed to medium-high (7 on a Kitchen Aid) and whisk another 3 minutes, then crank the speed to 8 for go another 3 minutes. You should have a very stiff, dry meringue.  If the meringue has not become stiff enough to clump inside the whisk, continue beating for another minute, or until it does so.
9. Add in a small amount of the food colouring and whisk for a final minute on the highest speed  Don’t worry if it deflates a little at this stage – I find adding the colour can make this happen.
10. Remove the bowl from the mixer.
11. Add the dry ingredients all at once and fold them in with a rubber spatula. Use both a folding motion (to incorporate the dry ingredients) and a rubbing/smearing motion, to deflate the meringue against the side of the bowl. This is called macaronage - it is about deflating the whites: you want to knock the air out of the meringue.
12. Count each fold carefully. After about 25 folds, the mixture will still have a quite lumpy and stiff texture. You probably want to do another 15 or so folds.
13. To test when the batter is ready, spoon some of the mix out and dollop it on top. Count to 30 – the dolloped mix should gradually incorporate back into the rest of the mixture. If it doesn’t incorporate, fold again. Keep testing to make sure that you don’t go too far. Overmixed macaroon batter has a runny, pancake batter-like texture. It will ooze continuously. I don’t know of anything to save it at this point so don’t go too far!
14. Transfer about half the batter to a piping bag.
15. Pipe the batter into the pre-traced circles on the baking parchment lined trays.  Stop piping just before the circle of batter reaches the borders of the drawn circle, as the batter will continue to spread just a bit.
16. When the piping bag is nearly empty, re-fill with batter and continue to pipe. 
17. After piping your macaroons, lift the baking tray and bang it hard on your worktop. Turn the tray ninety degrees and bang twice more. This will dislodge any large air bubbles that might cause your macaroons to crack
18. Turn the oven on to preheat at 150C
19. Leave your piped macaroons to rest on the worktop for at least 20 minutes while the oven heats up. 
20. Bake for about 18 - 25 minutes. To test if they are baked, gently peel the baking parchment  away from a macaroon at the edge of the tray.  If, the top comes off, leaving the bottom on the parchment, they need to go back in the oven.  The macaroon should gently peel off, but don’t worry if it sticks a little – the macaroons will continue to bake a little and firm up on the tray whilst cooling.  
21. When the macaroons have baked, remove from the oven and cool thoroughly on the pans, before peeling the cooled macaroons from the parchment.
22. Once cool, fill a piping bag with buttercream of your choice and pipe into half of the shells. Add any other fillings then sandwich them with plain halves.

White chocolate and strawberry filling

This is the filling I made for the pictured macaroons. It tasted great straight away as the slightly sharp strawberry puree contrasts well with the very sweet white chocolate buttercream. However, the puree was too runny and spurted out of the back of the macaroons! After a day, this problem resolved as the strawberry puree soaked into the macaroons. However, I then found them too sweet as you lost the sharpness of the fresh strawberry.  I think if I were to try them again, I would have a go at sticking a sheet of gelatine in the puree to set it a little.

White chocolate buttercream

Ingredients

1. 60g butter, at room temperature
2. 250g icing sugar
3. ½ tsp vanilla extract
4. 2 tblsp milk
5. 3 tblsp double cream
6. 100g good quality white chocolate

Method

1. Place the white chocolate in a glass bowl and set the bowl over a saucepan of gently simmering water.
2. Stir until melted.
3. Remove the bowl from the saucepan and set aside to cool slightly.
4. Place the butter, vanilla extract, milk and half of the icing sugar in a bowl and whisk (preferably with an electric or stand mixer, although I start with a wooden spoon so that the icing sugar doesn’t form huge clouds!) until smooth and creamy.
5. Add the rest of the icing sugar and mix again until smooth.
6. Add in the double cream and cooled white chocolate and mix again.

Strawberry puree

1. Place approximately 10 strawberries in a blender and blend until smooth.

Verdict

This is a really reliable recipe for macaroons - but I'm quite tempted to give another one a go - when I have some time to experiment. Although this recipe does result in a little "foot" and domed, shiny top, they don't rise quite as much as I would like. The pictures on Brave Tart's website suggests that she doesn't get much more rise. 

The filling needs refining - I like the idea of strawberry and white chocolate but need to work out how to make it work a little better. I have also made macaroons before with a passionfruit buttercream and they were delicious! As a warning, recipes do suggest that you can flavour the actual macaroon - this has always ended up killing the meringue for me - so I don't bother - the filling provides plenty of flavour!

Christmas Spice Biscuits

Merry Christmas! Sorry it’s a little late – I’ve been having a lovely relaxing time back at home over Christmas. Time to catch up on writing up a few of the things that I made before Christmas.

At work, we have a Christmas Breakfast: everyone takes in a food contribution and we have a bit of a party, including handing out the Secret Santa gifts. I decided to buy the Really Good biscuit tin (as in my list of great gifts for bakers) as my Secret Santa gift and so felt that it really needed to be filled with biscuits! Biscuits are great as they can be prepared a few days in advance, so very useful at this time of year when evenings and weekends tend to be busy.

I wanted to make use of some of my Christmas cookie cutters, so decided on the Biscuiteers’ Treacle Spice biscuits – as the Biscuiteers’ biscuits are brilliant for using with cutters. I hadn’t baked these ones before but they sounded suitably festive! They are easy to make, although slightly hard to judge when they are cooked as they are a fairly dark colour.  They held their shape beautifully, even the delicate thin bits of the shapes. However, for me, they were a little too treacly and slightly bitter. Therefore, when I made a second batch to take home, I substituted half of the treacle for golden syrup and also added the zest of half an orange, which really improved them for me. Don’t worry if the dough seems very marbled when it comes together– this doesn’t matter and it is important not to over-work the dough as this will make the biscuits tough.

Here’s the adapted recipe (makes about 24 biscuits, I usually double the recipe):

Christmas Spice Biscuits

Ingredients

1. 200g plain flour
2. ½ tsp baking powder
3. ½ tsp ground ginger
4. ½ tsp cinnamon
5. ½ tsp mixed spice
6. Zest of ½ an orange
7. 50g dark brown sugar
8. 100g salted butter, diced (at room temp)
9. 25g black treacle
10. 25g golden syrup

Method

1. Sift the flour, baking powder and all the spices into a mixing bowl. Add the sugar and stir well.
2. Rub in the butter, using just the tips of your fingers, until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.
3. Make a well in the centre of your mix and add the golden syrup, treacle and orange zest.
4. Use a knife to stir the mixture until it begins to come together as a dough.
5. Use your hands to bring the dough together.
6. Divide the dough into two and shape into two flat disks.
7. Place the first piece of dough between two sheets of baking parchments. (This means that you do not have to add extra flour when rolling.)
8. Roll the dough out evenly until it is approximately 5-6mm thick all over (you can buy rolling guides, but I have this rolling pin, which is brilliant!). If the top or bottom sheets of parchment crinkle at any time, peel it off and smooth out.
9. When rolled to the correct thickness, move the dough (still sandwiched between parchment) onto a baking tray and then into the fridge to chill for at least 20-30 minutes.
10. After chilling, use your selected cutters to cut out the biscuits, cutting each one as close to the last as possible, in order to use the dough efficiently. Re-roll the dough as necessary, but try to work the dough as little as possible.  
11. Place each biscuit onto a lined baking tray, allowing space between as the biscuits will spread a little.
12. Bake the biscuits for 14 – 18 minutes. When cooked, the biscuits will be firm around the edges but still slightly soft on top.
13. Remove the baking trays from the oven and carefully remove each biscuit from the tray, placing them gently onto a wire cooling rack. The biscuits will still be very delicate at this stage.  
14. Allow biscuits to cool totally before storing or icing.

To decorate:

Snowflakes

I used the two smallest cutters from this set.

Ingredients

1. 20ml orange juice or water
2. 150g royal icing sugar
3. Ice blue food colour
4. Edible silver balls

Method

1. Add the orange juice to the royal icing sugar.
2. Use an electric mixer to beat the mix (starting on low and increasing to high speed) for about 5 minutes. You are looking for the mix to be a toothpaste-like consistency.
3. Spoon the icing into a piping bag with a very small round tip.
4. Ice the biscuits with a variety of swirling patterns, decorating with silver balls as required.

Baubles

I used the cutters from this set.

Ingredients

1. Ready-to-roll fondant icing
2. Water
3. Paste food colours
4. Edible gold leaf
5. Lustre dusts
6. Clear alcohol (eg vodka/gin)

Method 

You can use either pre-coloured ready-to roll fondant or colour the fondant yourself – or I guess you could make your own fondant – but this seems like a lot of effort!

1. Roll the coloured fondant out to approximately 2mm thick.
2. If desired, roll the icing carefully over an embossing plate.
3. Using the same cutters as used for the biscuits, cut out the fondant.
4. Use a clean brush to brush each biscuit with water before carefully placing the fondant shapes onto the biscuits.
5. Mix a sprinkling of lustre dust with a drop of the alcohol to create a paint.
6. Use a fine paint brush to decorate the biscuits.
7. Use another brush to gently lift fragments of the gold leaf and carefully place to form the top of the bauble.

Polar animals

I bought this set of polar animal cutters from TK Maxx just before Christmas – worth a look in there, they had lots of sets for bargain prices!

Ingredients

1. Ready-to-roll fondant icing
2. Water
3. Paste food colours

Method

You can use either pre-coloured ready-to roll fondant or colour the fondant yourself – or I guess you could make your own fondant – but this seems like a lot of effort!

1. Roll the coloured fondant out to approximately 2mm thick.
2. Using the same cutters as used for the biscuits, cut out the fondant.
3. Use a clean brush to brush each biscuit with water before carefully placing the fondant shapes onto the biscuits.
4. Use different colours of fondant to add details like the penguins’ feet and beaks, and scarves for the penguins and bears.    

 

Amaretti biscuits

It’s very nearly December, so time to start practising a few recipes that I like to do for little Christmas presents for friends and family. I’m meeting up with some friends tomorrow so I decided to have a go at one of my easiest Christmas recipes – amaretti biscuits. This is a Gino D’Acampo recipe taken from the BBC website – the only changes that I have made is that I roll the biscuits rather than spooning them onto the trays; I use parchment rather than greaseproof paper (and so don’t need to butter the paper) and I make them much smaller than suggested. The original recipe suggested that it made 20 biscuits – I make about 70! I also find that they tend to take longer to bake than suggested (although this could be my oven) – I suggest turning the trays after about 12 minutes so that they bake evenly and leaving them in until they are golden brown all over.

These taste great but I'm still not completely convinced about this recipe - they don't rise or crack across the top in the way I would expect - and they are a bit chewier rather than crisp. Not sure if this is down to the way that I mix in the sugar and almonds - maybe I knock out too much of the air - I'm not sure. May give another recipe a go at some point soon.  

Amaretti biscuits

Ingredients

1. 340g/12oz ground almonds
2. 340g/12oz caster sugar
3. 4 eggs, whites only
4. 30ml/1fl oz amaretto liquor

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 170C/325F/Gas 3.
2. Line two tins with baking parchment.
3. In a large bowl beat the egg whites until firm.
4. Mix the sugar and the almonds gently into it.
5. Add the amaretto liquor and fold in gently until you have a smooth paste.
6. Roll small balls of the paste and place on the baking trays – leaving at least 2cm between each as they will expand, whilst cooking.
7. Bake in the oven for approximately 15 minutes or until golden brown.
8. Leave to cool for a couple of minutes and then remove from baking trays and cool on a wire rack.