Vegan Snickerdoodles

This came about as I was in experimentation phase and due to stay at friends – one of whom is vegan. I don’t like to arrive somewhere empty handed so the hunt was on for some vegan baked goods. I couldn’t be bothered to hunt through my old copies of Jamie magazine to find the ‘vegan’ issue so just went free style on an old favourite.

 

This recipe needed substitutes for butter and egg. The butter is easy as coconut oil has a lot of the same qualities. The egg was harder as I’d never had to do it before. Plus I had thought that this recipe didn’t have egg in so it was initially a bit of a surprise. However help is only a google away. There are tons of suggestions but I went for vegetable oil as it seemed to promise to do what was needed.

 

The final products were very good. A bit more crumbly than regular ones, as I guess the egg does a binding job that the oil doesn’t, but they held their shape. I took them into work, my usual test for my baking, and everyone was very complimentary.

 

Ingredients

125g plain flour

¼ tsp grated nutmeg

½ tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

60g coconut oil

50g caster sugar + 1tbsp

30ml vegetable oil

½ tsp vanilla extract

1 heaped tsp ground cinnamon 

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/GM 4.
2. Add the nutmeg, baking powder and salt to the flour and mix well.
3. Whisk the coconut oil and 50g caster sugar together. You’re not going to be creaming it as much as you would with butter, but make sure you spend a couple of minutes doing it.
4. Then add the vegetable oil and vanilla, mixing well, before adding the flour mixture. You’ll need to use your hands at the end to bring the dough together.
5. On a plate mix the remaining sugar and cinnamon together.
6. Then divide the dough into 16 balls. Just break the dough into quarters then each of the quarters into four. Roll into balls, then roll in the sugar and cinnamon mix to cover the outside completely.
7. Pop on a baking tray and bake for 20 minutes. Let cool completely.

Gingerbread Biscuits

Before Christmas I went on an epic baking spree. My standard Porter Cake featured but I also made some gingerbread stars because a) gingerbread is super simple to make and b) I have some lovely star shaped cutters that my friend gave me. Stars are pretty much my favourite thing – second are fireworks and then balloons. However, enough about my love of fun things and on to the recipe.

Ingredients

250g butter

200g dark muscovado sugar (regular dark brown sugar can work)

4 tbsp golden syrup (buy the new squeeze bottle they do – it make it to easy)

4 tbsp maple syrup

600g plain flour

2tsp bicarb of soda

4 tsp ground ginger

2 tsp cinnamon

Zest and juice of 1 orange

1. Preheat the oven to 200°C/GM6.
2. Put the butter, sugar, golden and maple syrup into a saucepan and melt together. You want it to boil and then turn off the heat.
3. In another bowl mix all the dry ingredients – flour, bicarb, spices and zest – and then stir in the butter mixture. If it’s too stiff then you can use some orange juice to bring it together.
4. Lightly flour a surface and roll out the dough to about 5mm. Then start cutting. I used stars but any shape will work. Gingerbread hold their shape really well so suit being cut into shapes.
5. Ideally put the shapes in the fridge for about 20 minutes before baking for 8-10 minutes. You want them to be going a little brown. They’ll harden outside of the oven as they cool.
6. You can decorate these if you like but I tend to just want to eat them.

Chocolate Malt Biscuits

A couple of weekends ago some good friends of mine got married. The night before one of the Bride's friends, who I met on the hen, stayed over at mine as we were decorating a boat together on the wedding day (I know - random). Anyway she brought many lovely gifts with her, one of which being a jar of caramel biscuit spread (the others alcohol based) which we had discussed in length on the hen do. It’s basically the caramel biscuits you sometimes get with tea or coffee in the little wrapper mushed up to make a spread. I know!!! 

She proceeded to reveal a packet of malted milk biscuits from her bag as these are the structure she had found best to spread this on. It was immense.  

So that got me thinking about malt and biscuits. I’m a fan of malt. I’ll have a malt shake over a pure milkshake but I’ve never been a fan of malt loaf or malt drinks. However the malted milk biscuits were good and so I investigated. I found a recipe and they worked out very well. I made 2 ½ times this amount as my work eat biscuits like the world is ending and I needed lots! 

Ingredients

150g plain flour

½ tsp baking powder

Pinch of salt

100g butter (soft)

75g granular sugar

60g Ovaltine

2 large egg yolks (you can whisk up the whites, add 120g caster sugar to make 2 large meringues. Bake on the lowest heat you have for about 1 hour, turn off the oven and leave to cool in the oven).

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1.    Preheat the oven to 180°C/GM4.

2.    Combine the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Leave to one side for the moment.

3.    Cream the butter and sugar together until it’s got pale. Everyone goes for this fluffy thing but unless you have a free standing whisk thing then about3 or 4 minutes will do.

4.    Then add the Ovaltine, egg yolks and vanilla. Mix well.

5.    Add the flour mixture and you’re done. You may need to use your hands to bring the mixture together as it will just look like wet sand.

6.    Then divide into 16 balls.

7.    Space them out on a baking tray – no more than 8 on a large cookie sheet – and press them down until they are about 1cm thick. Bake for 11 minutes. No more, no less!

8.    Cool and eat with a glass of milk.

 

Look - spread on biscuits!!! Oh and wine.

 

Bacon and Chocolate Chip Cookies (Primal/Gluten Free/Dairy Free)

Primal – sounds fairly basic and maybe a little bit cool huh? It’s apparently a diet. Not a ‘less not eat anything until we need to pass out and then have a small piece of cheese’ diet but one that looks at what we evolved to eat. Or something like that. It’s probably like the Paleo diet and the Caveman diet and anything else that basically doesn’t let you eat anything fun or anything that was invented in France – French bread, pastries, macaroons, croissants (some of these things may not have been invented in France but I can’t be bothered to research in this for the sake of this). 

I’m slightly suspicious of these kinds of restrictions on what you eat, mainly because it stops me eating chocolate and bread. The Thew follows a Paleo-esque diet. He eats an incredibly healthy diet so he can drink lots of alcohol and maintain fitness. Currently he is spending most evenings upside down in a handstand position against one of our walls. Hey – whatever works for you! 

My good friend Claire shared this recipe with me and, while I’m not sure about trying to recreate recipes using paleo/primal ingredients in place of good old butter and sugar, it was intriguing enough for me to give them a try. The original method I read is a bit lacking on details and the one thing you need to do with these kind of recipes is a good methodology if you have any hope in hell of making something that looks like the ‘real’ thing. Many people at work liked these, and they are ok, but I’d just rather eat a chocolate chip cookie made with brown sugar and wheat flour. I’m not sure what the bacon adds, other than a bit of salty taste, but I guess it’s to add protein. Anyway, if this is your thing, go knock yourself out! 

Ingredients

5 rashers of streaky bacon (I used M&S)

60ml of maple syrup (plus 125ml – see below)

2 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

125ml coconut oil (make sure it’s fairly well melted so room temp or melt it first)

125ml maple syrup

1 tsp bicarb of soda

1 tsp salt

300g ground almonds

200g dark chocolate chips 

1.    Preheat the oven the 190°C/GM 5.

2.    Dip the bacon in the maple syrup and bake for about 25 minutes. It may need longer. Put them on foil to save mess. Turn half way through and ignore how burnt the foil gets from the run off maple syrup. Cool, ideally on fresh foil or greaseproof paper. They are very sticky! Chop into bits.

3.    Whisk the eggs, vanilla, coconut oil and 125ml maple syrup together in a bowl. You want to goof frothy mixture as the eggs will add air to the mixture and help keep them light.

4.    In a large bowl mix the bicarb, salt and almonds. Add the egg mixture and whisk together.

5.    Add the chocolate chips and bacon bits stirring to incorporate.

6.    The put heaped teaspoons of mixture on a baking tray, leaving space between them. Flatten them out with the back of a spoon or spatula so they resemble a cookie shape.

7.    Bake for 11-12 minutes – you want them turning golden brown. Cool completely before serving.

Makes about 30.

N.B. I made these afterwards without the bacon and they worked well. The bacon definitely gives a good savoury/salty edge but it's not necessary.

 

Oatmeal Sandwich Cookies

I don’t really have anything to waffle on about this week before I let you have the recipe of what I made on Monday. I did think about sharing a list of all the places The Thew and I went on Saturday for one of our quarterly ‘Days of Fun’ but I got worried about how long the list of places was getting and what that may say about the alcohol consumption that went on. Needless to say we drank a lot, ate a lot of cheese and had fun.  

So on to the recipe. I found this on The New York Times’ website and tinkered a bit with quantities as their original recipe would have made something that resembled all that is wrong with US portion sizes. These went down well and were described as a reverse cheesecake. 

Ingredients

Cookies

40g of desiccated coconut

120g butter

165g dark brown sugar

1 large egg

1 tsp vanilla extract

95g plain flour

½ tsp salt

½ tsp baking powder

2 tsp ground cinnamon

130g porridge oats

50g stoned dates, chopped (you could use raisins or sultanas if you prefer)

3 tbsp caster sugar 

Filling

60g cream cheese

3 tbsp mascarpone cheese (I forgot to weigh what this was!)

12g icing sugar

2 tsp vanilla extract 

1.    Heat the oven to 180°/GM4 and spread the coconut on a baking tray. Toast for about 5 minutes (stiring half way through. You want it going golden and smelling great. Once done turn the oven up to 190°C/GM5.

2.    Cream the butter and brown sugar together until light in colour.

3.    Add the eggs and vanilla, mixing well. Worth scraping down the sides of the bowl midway through.

4.    Add the flour, salt, baking powder and 1 tsp of the cinnamon. Beat well and then add the oats, dates, and coconut mixing well again.

5.    This mixture will make 32 cookies so divide the mixture in half, then into four and then each of the four pieces into four. It sounds complicated when written down but it will make sense when you’re doing it. Roll them into balls.

6.     ombine the caster sugar with 1 tsp ground cinnamon and roll the balls in it to cover the outside.

7.    Put them on a baking tray, well-spaced out, flatten very slightly and bake for about 12 minutes (turn half way through if you have a gas oven to give an even colour).

8.    While that is going on put all the filling ingredients in to a bowl (sifting in the icing sugar) and mix well. Once the cookies are cooled use the filling to sandwich two together. I suppose it was about a tsp worth but I just used a knife the spread it on about 5mm thick.

Chocolate Cookies

I almost didn’t bake this week but then decided to. I ran home from work last night, as part of my training for a half marathon, and was exhausted by having to dodge out of the way of people who somehow failed to see me barrelling towards them. They’re happily walking along, minding their own business, when all of a sudden they realise that they could be not minding their own business and get in the way of someone running if only they moved about two feet to the left. They swiftly action this movement and cause me to have to jump into the road while yelling ‘I’m running here’ in a Brooklyn accent (that last bit is said in my head as per Sandra Bullock trying to glide in Miss. Congeniality – ignore me if you haven’t seen it). 

Anyway, while I have successfully taken out a few people while running (once in a particularly epic way) it’s not my preferred way of dealing with it. Run around and rack up some karma (minus whatever comes off for yelling at them in my head). Due to the running home I hadn’t picked up supplies so had to work with what was in the fridge and my cupboard. I haven’t stocked up in a while but luckily these use basic ingredients that I tend to have. 

Be warned. These are a little messy to make as you’re rolling sticky dough in your hands. If you have small children that need to be kept busy (and you’re not concerned about the hygiene of them licking their hands and stuff) get them to do it. The final result is worth it though as these are lovely and chewy. Almost brownie like if that makes sense.  

Ingredients

125g butter (ideally soft)

175g caster sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla extract

125g plain flour

35g cocoa powder (use a good one)

Generous ½ tsp bicarb of soda 

1.    Preheat the oven to 180°C/GM4.

2.    Cream together the butter and sugar. If you can’t be bothered to let the butter get soft, cut it into small pieces and whizz it on its own for a while. Then add the sugar.

3.    Add the egg and vanilla, mixing well.

4.    Add all the dry ingredients, remembering to sift the cocoa powder in (I just measure both the flour and cocoa in the same bowl and sift it together).

5.    Then comes the messy part. Roll heaped teaspoons of the dough into balls. You’ll get about 23-26 depending on size. So walnut size I suppose.

6.    Line a baking tray/sheet and place well apart as these spread like anything. Place the balls of dough on and bake for about 10 minutes. They’ll come out looking puffy but will settle down flat.

7.    Keep on the baking paper while they cool a bit and then take off and cool completely on a wire rack. (Obviously eat one while they are still warm!)
 

Chocolate Chip Cookies

The fear of electrocution finally became too great. I decided to buy a new electric hand whisk as my current one requires me to jam a knife in the top to start it (do not tell The Thew that is what I have been doing). Not the greatest way to start a baking project. I hate shopping but took myself along to John Lewis where the cheapest, and lightest, hand whisk wasn't available (why is it on the shelf then?!) but one 2 ½ times more expensive and about eight times as heavy was. I left. I mean who (Kenwood) makes a really heavy hand whisk? Yes it was very pretty but I have to hold the thing and cream butter and sugar together. Luckily my local Tesco had a nice cheap and light hand whisk so I was saved from electrocution. 

I decided to celebrate by finding a recipe that required a lot if whisking. However while looking for this I found my chocolate chip cookie recipe I thought I had lost. It’s brilliant and simple, making a crunchy, yet chewy, cookie. You can freeze it and cook from frozen as well as make giant cookies if you have a pizza pan to bake it in. The recipe makes a lot of dough but that was fine by me as I had need of a lot of baked goods. I’m on film shoots (not as glamorous as it sounds) all this week and I like to bring baked goods with me. I’m bad with names and faces and on shoots I meet so many new people, forget all their names and rely on being the provider of tasty treats to smooth things over.

Apologies for not converting into grams. It’s based on a US recipe and there is something about using cups and basically shoving all the ingredients in together that is so wonderfully easy that I think the experience should be preserved. I also realised, while typing this up, that I used baking powder, not bicarb, which explains why they didn’t come out chewy. They still taste good so have added an option here to pretend that I meant to do it. 

Ingredients

1 ½ cups of butter at room temperature (important!)

1 ¼ cups of granulated sugar

1 ¼ cups of soft dark brown sugar, firmly packed (if you have light then fine but the dark given them a caramel edge)

2 tsp vanilla extract

2 large eggs

4 cups of flour

2 tsp bicarb of soda (or 2 tsp baking powder if you want them crisper and more biscuit like)

1 tsp salt

300g chocolate chips (whatever you like best – I did a mix of dark and milk) 

1.    Preheat the oven to 180°C/GM 4.

2.    Put the butter, both sugars, vanilla and eggs in a big bowl. Whisk together. This is why room temperature butter is important as you need it soft otherwise dough will start flying.

3.    Stir the bicarb of soda and salt into the flour.

4.    Alternate adding the flour mixture and chocolate chips until it’s all used up (do about thirds).

5.    Take a rounded tsp of mixture and roll into a ball. Do this for all the mixture – yes it takes a while but watch something on TV.

6.    Cook what you want for 9-12 minutes on a cookie tray and freeze the rest in bags. They cook from frozen in about 18 minutes.  

Makes about 60-80!

Grown Up Cookies (including basic cookie recipe)

Sometimes inspiration strikes in the weirdest places. I found mine this week in a health food shop. I’d sauntered into Holland and Barrett looking for some quinoa flour as I’d seen it in a gluten free recipe. They didn’t have any but I saw some crystallised ginger. Now I’ve never eaten this but one of my friends loves it. In fact ginger is his favourite root. This little gem was gathered when we lived together at university, had clearly run out of conversation and had started on the ‘what’s your favourite …?' game. 

For some reason crystallised ginger has always struck me as a fairly grown up thing to like. Maybe because my friend looks fairly sensible and is now an Accountant. Maybe. Anyway, I picked the packet up and augmented it with a bag of broken brazil nuts (way cheaper than unbroken ones and as I’d probably be chopping them up it made sense). I knew I had chocolate at home but how to bring them all together?!  I was fairly busy at work so hadn’t given it much thought until I struck on one word – ‘COOKIES’! 

So what follows is a basic cookie recipe that you can either use immediately or store in the fridge and cut slices off as and when you need it. Then you just place your extra ingredients on top so that they squish into the cookies while they are in the oven. These cookies have a high butter content so are very crumbly and also tend to spread while baking so leave them space. I think that they are a more grown up type of baked good due to the more advanced flavours of ginger, dark chocolate and nuts. However Smarties, marshmallows and sprinkles would put an end to that.

Ingedients

250g butter (well worth softening it first but otherwise you could grate it to speed up the prep time)

150g granulated sugar

½ tsp vanilla extract (you could add spices for extra flavour)

1 large egg

225g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

Pinch of salt (if not using salted butter)

Some chopped toppings – I used dark chocolate, brazil nuts and crystallised ginger 

1.    Cream the butter and sugar together until pale. This is very butter heavy I find it might take a bit longer than usual.

2.    Add the vanilla extract and egg, mixing until it’s combined.

3.    Add the flour and baking powder (along with salt if using) and mix until smooth.

4.    Now put the dough on a large piece of cling film and manipulate into a sausage of dough. I’m sure there is a great method for this but I just make sure I have a lot of cling film and a large, flat surface. It gets there somehow. Key is twisting the ends once it’s roughly 7cm in diameter as this helps get a good shape.

5.    Put the dough in the fridge for an hour or so, or pop in the freezer until you need it.

6.    When you are ready to bake them preheat the oven to 200°C/GM6.

7.    Cut 1cm slices from it and arrange them on a baking tray, allowing space for them to spread out.

8.    Sprinkle on your toppings at this stage. You could just have vanilla butter cookies but shoving extra things in is better! Any chocolate would work, also any chopped nuts. Just experiment with whatever you have hanging around.

9.    Bake for 8-10 minutes (I’d go 10 if the mixture was frozen). When done cool for a couple of minutes and transfer to a cooling rack. If you leave too long they’ll stick (although less of an issue if you’re using baking paper).

Soft Chocolate Orange Cookies

I've signed up for a night time 10km run. I don't really know why (it could be the fault of The Thew who is a superman of athletic endeavour and may have inspired me). I saw it advertised in the cafe in my local park on Sunday morning and was curious about it. Then I had some time to kill that afternoon while waiting for a train and instead of just browsing the site I bunged my name and cold hard cash down. I do get a complimentary t-shirt but as it’s a Nike run I'd bloody well hope so. It's more like I bought a t-shirt and got a 10km run thrown in. 

Anyway I was starting to come to terms with it when I saw that running is the new clubbing on the Guardian online. This run has a light show, music and a party afterwards. This has slightly depressed me. I stopped spinning when it struck me that it seemed to be where people go when they realise they'll never go clubbing again but still want to listen to house and dance music. Not that I go clubbing anymore but I don't want to think I've given up hope of one day being in a club trashing about to hard house. Therefore I just have it on my iPod and go running - not much better but somehow it doesn’t feel as bad to me. I'm now concerned about this night time 10km, as it might be dangerously grown up and a bit sad. 

I'm going to go ahead with it as one of the reasons I love living in London is all the random stuff that goes on which I think I should take advantage of. It does mean I don't have long to train, as its in less than four weeks, so I'm going to cut out crap food until I do the run. So this week I've baked two things that aimed to use up all the chocolate I have in my home. This is the first of them. As I don't fancy running 10km with an entire chocolate orange weighing me down (left over from Easter) I've made up a soft chocolate orange cookie. They're pretty good so give them a go. It doesn't need to be a chocolate orange on the top just whack a huge hunk of any chocolate on top that you happen to have. 

Ingredients 

200g butter

100g soft brown sugar (I used light as I didn't have dark but I think that would work well)

200g caster sugar

1 large egg

75g cocoa powder

275g self-raising flour

50-100ml milk

1 chocolate orange (this recipe leaves you 4 pieces to sustain you while you bake) or 16 chunks of chocolate 

1.    Preheat the oven to 220°C/GM7.

2.    Cream together the butter with both sugars. Then mix in the egg.

3.    Sift the cocoa into the bowl and add the flour. It's best to mix with a spoon as it’s a dense dough. If you need it add some milk but make sure you mix the dry ingredients in well first as you don't want the dough too wet.

4.    Once it’s come together divide the mixture into 16 balls and place on a baking sheet. Leave a lot of room so you'll need two trays or do in two batches. Then smush a slice of chocolate orange, or a chunk of chocolate, into the top of the dough flattening it out a bit.

5.    Bake for 10 minutes at the top of the oven and let cool as they will be delicate when first out.

6.    Run 10km wearing your 'complimentary' t-shirt.