As you guys know, Nikki came to stay a little while back. And one of the things we did while she was here? Was to make a vlog together. We originally planned this like forever ago, and the idea was that it would be a weekly series. I'd talk about the history of a product and its significance in Australian culture, then the following week, Nikki would sample it and tell the internet what she thought.
Given that she leaves Australia next Tuesday, we had to cram the process into a much shorter space of time. This video is hella long, but considering I had 59 minutes and 30 seconds worth of footage to work with, I think I did pretty well to get it down to a hair under 15 minutes.
Please enjoy us eating all the foods and generally being ridiculous. You're welcome, internet. And yes, those facial expressions in the thumbnail are totally indicative of our feelings towards several of the foods we tried.
If you are Australian and actually like Chico Babies, please let me know immediately. Because I need to know.
K xx
Showing posts with label biscuits. Show all posts
Showing posts with label biscuits. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Dessert Day - the Australian edition
700 posts, whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat??????
Ahem. On Monday, Deidre came over for another installment of Dessert Day. It ended up being a day of creating somewhat stereotypical Australian desserts, in the form of caramel slice and chocolate ripple cake. Sure, the second isn't exactly a difficult task - you take a packet of chocolate ripple biscuits, you smoosh them together with cream, you cover the whole thing in more cream, and then you wait 24 hours and eat it. But considering you can't buy gluten free chocolate ripple biscuits, things got a little more complicated!
We used this recipe from Smitten Kitchen, with the full amount of sugar because chocolate ripple biscuits are quite sweet. We used my cookie scoop to ensure they were evenly sized (and bigger than the recipe called for), but I think in the future I'd probably roll out the dough and use a cookie cutter instead. Keep a close eye on them while baking, because we accidentally let the first batch get a liiiiiiittle too brown. WHOOPS. Let the biscuits cool completely.
Then, whip 300mL of cream with some vanilla and some icing sugar. Smear a little of the cream along the plate you want to serve it on, then cover one side of a cookie in a thin layer of cream and sandwich it to another cookie. Cover that in cream as well, then place them vertically on the plate. Continue smooshing cookies together until it's as long as you want it to be. Then cover the whole lot in cream, ensuring there are no ugly holes, and chuck the whole thing in the fridge overnight. When you're ready to serve, cut it on the diagonal so you can see all the pretty layers, and shove it in your face.
In case you're wondering, the time in the fridge lets the cream make the cookies go soft and cake-like. It basically tastes like cookies and cream ice cream, but without the melting! And, according to my mum, you can add a slug of some kind of liqueur to the cream if you want to. It's not pretty, but it sure is delicious.
The caramel slice was Kat's mum's recipe, and the original included the fabulous instruction "Melt butt". Obviously, we had to make it.
For the base:
1 cup self raising flour
1 cup desiccated coconut
1 cup brown sugar
125g butter, melted
Mix everything together, then press into a greased and lined slice tin. Bake at 190 degrees for 10 minutes.
For the caramel:
440mL tin of condensed milk
2 tablespoons golden syrup
30g butter
Mix together in a saucepan over low heat until mixture thickens. Bring to a boil, then remove from the heat. Pour over the base, smooth, and bake for another 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool completely in the tin.
For the topping:
125g dark chocolate
30g copha/butter
Melt together in a double boiler, then pour over the slice. Smooth. When cool, cut into squares and serve.
We ran into a small problem in that we didn't quite cook the base enough (stupid gluten free, always requiring more cooking time...), which meant that the caramel mostly soaked in, forming a thin layer of caramel, and then a base that was half base, half caramel. So...that wasn't exactly ideal. That said, it was still completely and utterly delicious and I'd make it again in a heartbeat.
Will you be trying out either of these recipes?
K xx
Ahem. On Monday, Deidre came over for another installment of Dessert Day. It ended up being a day of creating somewhat stereotypical Australian desserts, in the form of caramel slice and chocolate ripple cake. Sure, the second isn't exactly a difficult task - you take a packet of chocolate ripple biscuits, you smoosh them together with cream, you cover the whole thing in more cream, and then you wait 24 hours and eat it. But considering you can't buy gluten free chocolate ripple biscuits, things got a little more complicated!
We used this recipe from Smitten Kitchen, with the full amount of sugar because chocolate ripple biscuits are quite sweet. We used my cookie scoop to ensure they were evenly sized (and bigger than the recipe called for), but I think in the future I'd probably roll out the dough and use a cookie cutter instead. Keep a close eye on them while baking, because we accidentally let the first batch get a liiiiiiittle too brown. WHOOPS. Let the biscuits cool completely.
Then, whip 300mL of cream with some vanilla and some icing sugar. Smear a little of the cream along the plate you want to serve it on, then cover one side of a cookie in a thin layer of cream and sandwich it to another cookie. Cover that in cream as well, then place them vertically on the plate. Continue smooshing cookies together until it's as long as you want it to be. Then cover the whole lot in cream, ensuring there are no ugly holes, and chuck the whole thing in the fridge overnight. When you're ready to serve, cut it on the diagonal so you can see all the pretty layers, and shove it in your face.
 |
| Before |
 |
| And after! |
The caramel slice was Kat's mum's recipe, and the original included the fabulous instruction "Melt butt". Obviously, we had to make it.
For the base:
1 cup self raising flour
1 cup desiccated coconut
1 cup brown sugar
125g butter, melted
Mix everything together, then press into a greased and lined slice tin. Bake at 190 degrees for 10 minutes.
For the caramel:
440mL tin of condensed milk
2 tablespoons golden syrup
30g butter
Mix together in a saucepan over low heat until mixture thickens. Bring to a boil, then remove from the heat. Pour over the base, smooth, and bake for another 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool completely in the tin.
For the topping:
125g dark chocolate
30g copha/butter
Melt together in a double boiler, then pour over the slice. Smooth. When cool, cut into squares and serve.
We ran into a small problem in that we didn't quite cook the base enough (stupid gluten free, always requiring more cooking time...), which meant that the caramel mostly soaked in, forming a thin layer of caramel, and then a base that was half base, half caramel. So...that wasn't exactly ideal. That said, it was still completely and utterly delicious and I'd make it again in a heartbeat.
Will you be trying out either of these recipes?
K xx
Friday, October 4, 2013
Dessert Day - the vague and lazy edition
Today, Deidre and I held yet another Dessert Day. Due to both of us (read: me) being vague to the point of forgetting to print out the recipe, check the ingredients AND make a shopping list, we decided to go with only one recipe and a movie that requires negative infinity brain ability.
The recipe we chose to make was these Nutella stuffed double chocolate chip cookies. We made a couple of changes becausewe're lazy it's not Dessert Day if we don't. You'll need the following:
2 1/4 cups gluten free plain flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
250 grams butter, softened
3/4 cup caster sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup dark chocolate chips
2/3 milk chocolate chips
1 large jar of Nutella
Start by creaming the butter and the sugars together in your handy dandy Kitchenaid. Add the eggs, one at a time, followed by the vanilla. Slowly add the dry ingredients and mix until just combined. Mix in the chocolate chips and hang on to your Kitchenaid for dear life because you probably should have done this part by hand. Cover the bowl and refrigerate for two hours.
Meanwhile, take the jar of Nutella, and place teaspoonfuls onto a tray lined with baking paper. We did the one and a half teaspoonfuls recommended in the actual recipe, and it was a liiiiiiiiittle too much in each cookie, so knock it back to a teaspoon. You'll need between 20 and 30 spoonfuls. In case you care, an entire jar of Nutella in blob form looks like this:
Stick the Nutella in the freezer for at least an hour. We had it in there for the same length of time as the cookie dough was in the fridge.
While the cookie dough is hanging out in the fridge, go and watch a cheese-tastic movie. We went with Rock of Ages, which delivered us such gems as "Did you just sigh audibly?" and "Concrete Balls are very heavy" (both courtesy of Russell Brand). It also taught us that the 80s featured much less blue eye shadow than we'd been led to believe, and that men very rarely wore shirts because it interfered with showing off their nipples. Also that Tom Cruise isn't a completely terrible singer, but his back looks increasingly like an old man's. And that Malin Akerman deserved hazard pay for some of her scenes. Oh, and that Catherine Zeta Jones should always sing Pat Benatar.
The recipe we chose to make was these Nutella stuffed double chocolate chip cookies. We made a couple of changes because
2 1/4 cups gluten free plain flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
250 grams butter, softened
3/4 cup caster sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup dark chocolate chips
2/3 milk chocolate chips
1 large jar of Nutella
Start by creaming the butter and the sugars together in your handy dandy Kitchenaid. Add the eggs, one at a time, followed by the vanilla. Slowly add the dry ingredients and mix until just combined. Mix in the chocolate chips and hang on to your Kitchenaid for dear life because you probably should have done this part by hand. Cover the bowl and refrigerate for two hours.
Meanwhile, take the jar of Nutella, and place teaspoonfuls onto a tray lined with baking paper. We did the one and a half teaspoonfuls recommended in the actual recipe, and it was a liiiiiiiiittle too much in each cookie, so knock it back to a teaspoon. You'll need between 20 and 30 spoonfuls. In case you care, an entire jar of Nutella in blob form looks like this:
Stick the Nutella in the freezer for at least an hour. We had it in there for the same length of time as the cookie dough was in the fridge.
While the cookie dough is hanging out in the fridge, go and watch a cheese-tastic movie. We went with Rock of Ages, which delivered us such gems as "Did you just sigh audibly?" and "Concrete Balls are very heavy" (both courtesy of Russell Brand). It also taught us that the 80s featured much less blue eye shadow than we'd been led to believe, and that men very rarely wore shirts because it interfered with showing off their nipples. Also that Tom Cruise isn't a completely terrible singer, but his back looks increasingly like an old man's. And that Malin Akerman deserved hazard pay for some of her scenes. Oh, and that Catherine Zeta Jones should always sing Pat Benatar.
 |
| Source |
After the two hours have elapsed, preheat the oven to 175°C. To assemble cookies, take about two tablespoons of dough. We used a cookie scoop to ensure ours were even:
 |
| Yes, that's an enormous amount of dough. I know. |
Roll it into a ball, then make a hollow in the middle. (Deidre did the hard work on this while I stood around vaguely, manning the cookie scoop) Take a blob of Nutella from the freezer, press it into the centre, and mould the dough around it. Ensure that there are no gaps/holes, otherwise the Nutella will ooze everywhere in the oven.
 |
| Frozen Nutella blob |
 |
| Smoosh it in the dough |
 |
| Stick giant cookies on a tray |
Bake for 9-12 minutes (ours were at the upper end of that due to being gluten free), then let them cool on the tray for about 10 minutes before moving to a cooling rack. The recipe says to sprinkle chocolate chips on the top of them before baking. We tried that with one batch and decided it was overkill, but if you want to, go ahead and add another 1/3 cup of milk chocolate chips for that purpose!
The verdict? Holy crap, these are amazing. They're rich and gooey and Nutella-y and generally delicious in every possible way. They COULD stand to be a little smaller so that you feel marginally less like you're about to spontaneously develop diabetes just by looking at them, but on the whole they were a massive win. And really, when you're feeling tired and vague, what more do you need???
K xx
Thursday, June 20, 2013
Funemployment
When one is unemployed, one has to make one's own fun to avoid going completely and utterly stir crazy and spending one's days hitting F5 on a bunch of different websites in the hopes that a job you're perfect for will magically appear.
For this reason, Deidre and I had a somewhat spontaneous Dessert Day yesterday. We consulted our "Dessert Day Planning" Google Docs spreadsheet (yes, we have one. What of it?!), and came up with two different things that we wanted to try:
1. Gluten free chocolate eclairs, and
2. Chocolate orange biscuits.
The first involved many MANY things that terrify us, including (but not limited to) eggs, piping bags, adding raw eggs to hot things, cutting things in half and filling them, and (perhaps most importantly) trying to convert butter measurements from sticks into grams.
As it turned out, making gluten free choux pastry wasn't as scary as anticipated. Although we WERE very glad of the instruction telling us that if it looked like mac and cheese, we should keep mixing because everything would be okay. Because seriously. It looked like mac and cheese.
When it came to the filling, we decided that using the vanilla pudding option listed in the recipe was far toocrass easy for the likes of us, and that we were going to make creme patissiere from scratch. A wee spot of Googling gave us this recipe. Degree of difficulty = low? WHERE DO WE SIGN UP?! We decided to double it, on the theory that too much is always better than not enough (a lesson I learnt while trying to colour match buttercream frosting...). And the degree of difficulty was, indeed, low. Except for the part where I managed to spill hot milk all over the kitchen floor. Whoops.
Eventually we were ready for the assembly process. But prior to assembly, I took photos of this eclair because it looks a little like a ghost:
No, seriously:
Ahem. The filling process - with me manning the piping bag full of creme patissiere and Deidre manning the saucepan full of ganache - went surprisingly smoothly, except for when we started to run out of room on the tray and the eclairs started making friends with each other...
End result?
The biscuits were incredibly simple to make, although rather stubborn when it came to forming a dough. I suspect you could make them in a food processor without any issues. We used regular caster sugar, on account of why would I buy a kilo of raw caster sugar when this is the only recipe I've ever seen that calls for it?! They turned out fine.
The verdict? We both thought the eclairs were a little eggy tasting, although we're both on the "Urgh, eggs, GROSS" train, which may have contributed to it. Now that they've been in the fridge for 24 hours, they seem to have improved and a pretty damned tasty if I do say so myself. As for the biscuits, they were FAR crunchier than I thought they would be. Yesterday, I wasn't a huge fan of them. Today? I dipped one in my hot chocolate and it was pretty much the greatest thing ever.
And then I subjected Deidre to the wonders of Paperback Hero, and there was much "WHAT IS HAPPENING OMG PUPPY HUGH JACKMAN YOU STOP THAT IMMEDIATELY"-ing.
In short, hurrah for funemployment??
Please tell me that you think that eclair looks like a ghost too and that it's not just me???
K xx
For this reason, Deidre and I had a somewhat spontaneous Dessert Day yesterday. We consulted our "Dessert Day Planning" Google Docs spreadsheet (yes, we have one. What of it?!), and came up with two different things that we wanted to try:
1. Gluten free chocolate eclairs, and
2. Chocolate orange biscuits.
The first involved many MANY things that terrify us, including (but not limited to) eggs, piping bags, adding raw eggs to hot things, cutting things in half and filling them, and (perhaps most importantly) trying to convert butter measurements from sticks into grams.
As it turned out, making gluten free choux pastry wasn't as scary as anticipated. Although we WERE very glad of the instruction telling us that if it looked like mac and cheese, we should keep mixing because everything would be okay. Because seriously. It looked like mac and cheese.
When it came to the filling, we decided that using the vanilla pudding option listed in the recipe was far too
Eventually we were ready for the assembly process. But prior to assembly, I took photos of this eclair because it looks a little like a ghost:
No, seriously:
Ahem. The filling process - with me manning the piping bag full of creme patissiere and Deidre manning the saucepan full of ganache - went surprisingly smoothly, except for when we started to run out of room on the tray and the eclairs started making friends with each other...
End result?
The biscuits were incredibly simple to make, although rather stubborn when it came to forming a dough. I suspect you could make them in a food processor without any issues. We used regular caster sugar, on account of why would I buy a kilo of raw caster sugar when this is the only recipe I've ever seen that calls for it?! They turned out fine.
 |
| Poor biscuits. I forgot to take proper photos of them. |
The verdict? We both thought the eclairs were a little eggy tasting, although we're both on the "Urgh, eggs, GROSS" train, which may have contributed to it. Now that they've been in the fridge for 24 hours, they seem to have improved and a pretty damned tasty if I do say so myself. As for the biscuits, they were FAR crunchier than I thought they would be. Yesterday, I wasn't a huge fan of them. Today? I dipped one in my hot chocolate and it was pretty much the greatest thing ever.
And then I subjected Deidre to the wonders of Paperback Hero, and there was much "WHAT IS HAPPENING OMG PUPPY HUGH JACKMAN YOU STOP THAT IMMEDIATELY"-ing.
In short, hurrah for funemployment??
Please tell me that you think that eclair looks like a ghost too and that it's not just me???
K xx
Friday, March 29, 2013
Possibly not the best idea ever
So remember last month how I decided I was going to make a vlog every month? It's that time again.
I apologise in advance for my singing voice. I hadn't warmed up and was too lazy to rerecord it once I realised that I sound awful. And for the length of this. And for the fact that I'm posting this at nearly 1am - I started uploading the video at 7.30 and it's LITERALLY JUST FINISHED.
Have a calorific Easter, y'all. (Yes, I'm taking the piss)
K xx
I apologise in advance for my singing voice. I hadn't warmed up and was too lazy to rerecord it once I realised that I sound awful. And for the length of this. And for the fact that I'm posting this at nearly 1am - I started uploading the video at 7.30 and it's LITERALLY JUST FINISHED.
Have a calorific Easter, y'all. (Yes, I'm taking the piss)
K xx
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Dessert Day: the "It takes HOW long?" edition
So Deidre came over yesterday for yet another installment of Dessert Day. And in keeping with our previous Dessert Days, the weather was HORRIFIC. Seriously, you guys. Every single Dessert Day is either a millionty degrees, insanely humid, or pouring with rain. I don't know how we manage it, I really don't...
ANYWAY. We started out making the dough for this chocolate and cinnamon bread thing. In typical Dessert Day fashion, we kludged it a little - my local supermarket only stocked milk powder in 2kg bags, so we left that out, we didn't have any guar gum, and we used Schweppes soda water instead of San Pellegrino, because we're not made of money, yo.
As we went to clear off the bench and get started, Deidre found the magazine section from Sunday's newspaper, which had Ryan Gosling on the cover. Obviously, he became a Dessert Day spectator:
So we made the dough, which resulted in much "Hmm"-ing and "Seriously? TWO TABLESPOONS OF YEAST??"-ing and "Cream cheese???"-ing, and set it aside to rise for an hour. Then we got started on cooking the quinoa for these savoury treats while we started putting together the ingredients for these mint chocolate chip cookies. At which point we promptly discovered that the box of baking soda I've been baking with since approximately 1997 was no longer with us. So while Deidre took care of the quinoa, I marched the three blocks back to the supermarket in search of more.
Discovery of the day: my supermarket only stocks baking soda in 1kg boxes. A KILO OF BAKING SODA. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be passing that thing down to Little Miss A in my will...
ANYWAY. So I got back and after we spent five minutes cackling hysterically about how much baking soda we had, we progressed with the cookies. They're pretty easy, and if you live in Australia and are deprived of Andes Mints (I had a packet of their baking chips, purchased at a Walmart in rural Virginia), I'm fairly certain you could replace them with 1 cup of dark chocolate chips, and replace the vanilla with mint essence, and end up with more or less the same result.
Once the cookies were in the oven (I highly recommend using a cookie scoop if you have one. It would have taken FOREVER otherwise), we went to check on the bread dough. Despite its two tablespoons of yeast and having been placed in a warm spot for an hour, it hadn't risen at all, leading us to the conclusion that in the future, we're going to prestart the yeast no matter what a recipe says. BECAUSE OF REASONS, DAMMIT.
Then we read the line in the recipe that said "Place covered bowl of dough in refrigerator overnight" and went "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, NO." So we proceeded to the next step, and rolled it out into a square. We cut up the cold butter as ordered, put it in the dough, folded it up, and rolled it out again, all as directed. The result - rather predictably - was this:
MMMMMMM, BUTTER CHUNKS.
Thankfully, the cookies came out of the oven at about that time, so we left the dough to think about what it had done while we taste tested them:
Word to the wise: the walnuts seem like a weird addition to a chocolate-y, minty cookie, but DO NOT LEAVE THEM OUT. They cut through some of the sweetness.
Ryan approved:
Back to the incredibly confusing dough. We covered it in a truly frightening amount of cinnamon, then crumbled the chocolate ganache over it, then plonked on a bunch of chopped almonds:
Then we rolled it up, which led to much "Oh God, is this even going to work??"-ing, and let it pull itself together for a few minutes while we whipped up the cheesy quinoa bites. Which, I have to say, were really quick and easy and turned out much better than I thought they would!
WIN.
Back to the dough, we spent a couple of minutes pondering what the hell "Gently coil roll" meant, and settled for folding it into three and smushing it into a loaf pan. We then checked the next step of the recipe, and went "IT HAS TO SIT FOR HOW LONG????". 90 minutes, it turned out.
*sigh*
So we went and ate our cheesy quinoa bites in front of the final episode of Pride & Prejudice, followed by a decent chunk of An Ideal Husband before putting the bread in the oven. FOR AN HOUR. Which allowed us to finish An Ideal Husband with five minutes to spare.
The recipe then said to leave the bread until completely cooled before you cut it, but LOL NOPE.
The final verdict on all the things:
Cheesy quinoa bites: could easily have other vegetables added to them. And probably more cheese.
Mint chocolate chip cookies: ZOMG, AMAZING.
Chocolate cinnamon bread thing: Tasty, but a ridiculous amount of work (and sitting around waiting for it to do things that never happened) for the ultimate end product. Also, a very confusing recipe. Also also, with all that cinnamon and a ton of nuts, my brain kept expecting it to contain apple rather than chocolate. But that's probably just me.
An Ideal Husband: Far more serious than either of us remembered. Also, whatever happened to Minnie Driver?
Ryan Gosling as a Dessert Day witness: He fell over once or twice, but didn't judge us for squealing about how gross it was to touch raw egg. So I'd call that a win!
K xx
ANYWAY. We started out making the dough for this chocolate and cinnamon bread thing. In typical Dessert Day fashion, we kludged it a little - my local supermarket only stocked milk powder in 2kg bags, so we left that out, we didn't have any guar gum, and we used Schweppes soda water instead of San Pellegrino, because we're not made of money, yo.
As we went to clear off the bench and get started, Deidre found the magazine section from Sunday's newspaper, which had Ryan Gosling on the cover. Obviously, he became a Dessert Day spectator:
So we made the dough, which resulted in much "Hmm"-ing and "Seriously? TWO TABLESPOONS OF YEAST??"-ing and "Cream cheese???"-ing, and set it aside to rise for an hour. Then we got started on cooking the quinoa for these savoury treats while we started putting together the ingredients for these mint chocolate chip cookies. At which point we promptly discovered that the box of baking soda I've been baking with since approximately 1997 was no longer with us. So while Deidre took care of the quinoa, I marched the three blocks back to the supermarket in search of more.
Discovery of the day: my supermarket only stocks baking soda in 1kg boxes. A KILO OF BAKING SODA. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be passing that thing down to Little Miss A in my will...
 |
| Deidre and me with the box of baking soda. Totally to scale. |
ANYWAY. So I got back and after we spent five minutes cackling hysterically about how much baking soda we had, we progressed with the cookies. They're pretty easy, and if you live in Australia and are deprived of Andes Mints (I had a packet of their baking chips, purchased at a Walmart in rural Virginia), I'm fairly certain you could replace them with 1 cup of dark chocolate chips, and replace the vanilla with mint essence, and end up with more or less the same result.
Once the cookies were in the oven (I highly recommend using a cookie scoop if you have one. It would have taken FOREVER otherwise), we went to check on the bread dough. Despite its two tablespoons of yeast and having been placed in a warm spot for an hour, it hadn't risen at all, leading us to the conclusion that in the future, we're going to prestart the yeast no matter what a recipe says. BECAUSE OF REASONS, DAMMIT.
Then we read the line in the recipe that said "Place covered bowl of dough in refrigerator overnight" and went "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, NO." So we proceeded to the next step, and rolled it out into a square. We cut up the cold butter as ordered, put it in the dough, folded it up, and rolled it out again, all as directed. The result - rather predictably - was this:
MMMMMMM, BUTTER CHUNKS.
Thankfully, the cookies came out of the oven at about that time, so we left the dough to think about what it had done while we taste tested them:
Word to the wise: the walnuts seem like a weird addition to a chocolate-y, minty cookie, but DO NOT LEAVE THEM OUT. They cut through some of the sweetness.
Ryan approved:
.JPG) |
| Yes, we're mature adults. |
Back to the incredibly confusing dough. We covered it in a truly frightening amount of cinnamon, then crumbled the chocolate ganache over it, then plonked on a bunch of chopped almonds:
 |
| Yes, that's the butter showing through the layer of cinnamon... |
Then we rolled it up, which led to much "Oh God, is this even going to work??"-ing, and let it pull itself together for a few minutes while we whipped up the cheesy quinoa bites. Which, I have to say, were really quick and easy and turned out much better than I thought they would!
 |
| Sadly, this was the best photo I took of them |
WIN.
Back to the dough, we spent a couple of minutes pondering what the hell "Gently coil roll" meant, and settled for folding it into three and smushing it into a loaf pan. We then checked the next step of the recipe, and went "IT HAS TO SIT FOR HOW LONG????". 90 minutes, it turned out.
*sigh*
So we went and ate our cheesy quinoa bites in front of the final episode of Pride & Prejudice, followed by a decent chunk of An Ideal Husband before putting the bread in the oven. FOR AN HOUR. Which allowed us to finish An Ideal Husband with five minutes to spare.
The recipe then said to leave the bread until completely cooled before you cut it, but LOL NOPE.
The final verdict on all the things:
Cheesy quinoa bites: could easily have other vegetables added to them. And probably more cheese.
Mint chocolate chip cookies: ZOMG, AMAZING.
Chocolate cinnamon bread thing: Tasty, but a ridiculous amount of work (and sitting around waiting for it to do things that never happened) for the ultimate end product. Also, a very confusing recipe. Also also, with all that cinnamon and a ton of nuts, my brain kept expecting it to contain apple rather than chocolate. But that's probably just me.
An Ideal Husband: Far more serious than either of us remembered. Also, whatever happened to Minnie Driver?
Ryan Gosling as a Dessert Day witness: He fell over once or twice, but didn't judge us for squealing about how gross it was to touch raw egg. So I'd call that a win!
K xx
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Dessert Day #2
Yesterday, the lovely Deidre of Decoybetty came over for another installation of Dessert Day. And it was just as much fun as last time, although slightly more traumatic.
As I suggested here, we started off making crème brûlée. I think we were both a bit terrified that we'd end up cooking the eggs when we poured the hot cream in. But by some miracle, we didn't. GO US!
Once the crème brûlée was chillaxing in the fridge, we decided to do the same. (Only not in the fridge. Obviously.) Instead, we ate cheese cut with a miniature cleaver, because we're classy like that:
And we ate baked Camembert, which I neglected to take a picture of but which was delicious. And we watched this, because IT'S AWESOME:
That led us to the conclusion that Bill Pullman was the 1990s version of Patrick Dempsey in that his hair had magical powers. It also led us to the conclusion that Sandra Bullock wore some truly APPALLING clothes in the 1990s.
We also discovered that pretty much every rice cracker in my house was stale. So eventually we abandoned ship and just started dipping the cheese directly into the spicy capsicum dip. Because we're classy like that.
Anyway, eventually we decided that it was time to brave the butane torch. DO NOT BRAVE THE BUTANE TORCH. Those things are freaking scary. First of all, they were rather temperamental in terms of getting the butane *into* the torch in the first place. So I ended up with my hands covered in butane on several occasions. And butane is REALLY COLD. #firstworldproblems Eventually, we got it up and running, and came out with this:
It was pretty good, if a little bland. In future, I'd probably make the recipe I found for passionfruit and coconut crème brûlée that I found on the following page of the recipe book!
We then moved on to this recipe for gluten free peppermint Oreos. I think they turned out pretty well!
Okay, we may have gotten a LITTLE carried away with the amount of frosting in some of them. But it was just going to go to waste otherwise. And they tasted pretty damned good. They got the seal of approval from Inspector Climate (Deidre's husband) and everything!!
After Deidre left, I ended up putting a couple of the other crème brûlées under the grill becauseI didn't want my hand to drop off from butane poisoning I'm a chicken I was curious to see if it was easier than the butane torch.
It was. It could just because I didn't really know what I was doing with the torch. But pffffff, whatever.
We already have our next Dessert Day scheduled. For World Nutella Day. You're welcome in advance.
Has anyone else had a Dessert Day as a result of our totally awesome should-be-copyrighted-so-we-make-our-fortunes idea?
K xx
As I suggested here, we started off making crème brûlée. I think we were both a bit terrified that we'd end up cooking the eggs when we poured the hot cream in. But by some miracle, we didn't. GO US!
Once the crème brûlée was chillaxing in the fridge, we decided to do the same. (Only not in the fridge. Obviously.) Instead, we ate cheese cut with a miniature cleaver, because we're classy like that:
And we ate baked Camembert, which I neglected to take a picture of but which was delicious. And we watched this, because IT'S AWESOME:
 |
| Source |
That led us to the conclusion that Bill Pullman was the 1990s version of Patrick Dempsey in that his hair had magical powers. It also led us to the conclusion that Sandra Bullock wore some truly APPALLING clothes in the 1990s.
We also discovered that pretty much every rice cracker in my house was stale. So eventually we abandoned ship and just started dipping the cheese directly into the spicy capsicum dip. Because we're classy like that.
Anyway, eventually we decided that it was time to brave the butane torch. DO NOT BRAVE THE BUTANE TORCH. Those things are freaking scary. First of all, they were rather temperamental in terms of getting the butane *into* the torch in the first place. So I ended up with my hands covered in butane on several occasions. And butane is REALLY COLD. #firstworldproblems Eventually, we got it up and running, and came out with this:
It was pretty good, if a little bland. In future, I'd probably make the recipe I found for passionfruit and coconut crème brûlée that I found on the following page of the recipe book!
We then moved on to this recipe for gluten free peppermint Oreos. I think they turned out pretty well!
Okay, we may have gotten a LITTLE carried away with the amount of frosting in some of them. But it was just going to go to waste otherwise. And they tasted pretty damned good. They got the seal of approval from Inspector Climate (Deidre's husband) and everything!!
After Deidre left, I ended up putting a couple of the other crème brûlées under the grill because
It was. It could just because I didn't really know what I was doing with the torch. But pffffff, whatever.
We already have our next Dessert Day scheduled. For World Nutella Day. You're welcome in advance.
Has anyone else had a Dessert Day as a result of our totally awesome should-be-copyrighted-so-we-make-our-fortunes idea?
K xx
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Peanut butter and white chocolate cookies
Remember about six weeks ago when I went to lunch with Em and Matt and we had pazookies (pizza cookies), and I said that I was going to try making peanut butter and white chocolate cookies when I was an unemployed bum? HELLO, UNEMPLOYED BUM SPEAKING!
That's right, unemployment has led me to spend some time Googling peanut butter cookies recipes. I gave this a test run (with some minor changes) on Thursday, and they're gone already. I think that's a resounding vote of approval, don't you?
Anyway, here's what you'll need:
Clearly, I forgot to put the egg in the photo, so I drew it in for you. You're welcome. Also, I'm totally the most artistic person on the planet.
Start by chopping up 125g of butter. I used unsalted, purely because the recipe calls for salt, and peanut butter can often be quite salty. Let it sit and soften:
Then put 1/2 cup of caster sugar into a bowl:
Add 1/2 cup of firmly packed brown sugar:
And 1/2 cup of peanut butter. I recommend using two spoons if you don't have one of those massive jars that you can basically fit your whole head in:
Add the butter:
Cream it all together until light. I recommend using a much deeper bowl than I did. It got a bit messy... (If you're much luckier than me, use your shiny cobalt blue Kitchenaid mixer *sigh*)
Add in the egg. I also added in 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract, which wasn't called for in the recipe, and which I forgot to take a photo of:
Beat in the egg until fluffy:
Measure out 1 1/4 cups of plain flour. (I used gluten free because that's all we had in the house. It worked just as well!)
Add to it 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda, and 1/4 teaspoon of salt:
Mix it all together, then either mix it through the butter mixture with a wooden spoon, or beat it in a little at a time.
Then add in 1 cup of white chocolate chips (technically, the recipe called for 1 cup of semi-sweet dark chocolate chips. But the comments said that you could use any kind of chips or just chopped chocolate):
Mix the chocolate chips/chunks through gently:
Roll it into balls and put it on a baking sheet. Even though my trays were non-stick, I put a sheet of baking paper down, becauseit saves on clean up and I'm lazy the dough was pretty sticky and I didn't want any unexpected dramas!
Bake at 190 degrees Celcius for 10 minutes.
Cool for a few minutes on the tray, then transfer to a cooling rack.
And enjoy!
The verdict? They were freaking amazing. It made three dozen cookies, and they were gone inside of 72 hours. They're moist and soft with the perfect amount of crunch around the edges, and courtesy of the chocolate chips and the peanuts (I used crunchy peanut butter). And thanks to the saltiness of the peanut butter, they're not too sweet.
I think I'll try them with dark chocolate chips in the future, just to see how they are. But I really am a fan of the peanut butter/white chocolate combination. It's the bomb.
Are you guys a fan of peanut butter in baking? With dark or white chocolate?
K xx
That's right, unemployment has led me to spend some time Googling peanut butter cookies recipes. I gave this a test run (with some minor changes) on Thursday, and they're gone already. I think that's a resounding vote of approval, don't you?
Anyway, here's what you'll need:
Clearly, I forgot to put the egg in the photo, so I drew it in for you. You're welcome. Also, I'm totally the most artistic person on the planet.
Start by chopping up 125g of butter. I used unsalted, purely because the recipe calls for salt, and peanut butter can often be quite salty. Let it sit and soften:
Then put 1/2 cup of caster sugar into a bowl:
Add 1/2 cup of firmly packed brown sugar:
And 1/2 cup of peanut butter. I recommend using two spoons if you don't have one of those massive jars that you can basically fit your whole head in:
Add the butter:
Cream it all together until light. I recommend using a much deeper bowl than I did. It got a bit messy... (If you're much luckier than me, use your shiny cobalt blue Kitchenaid mixer *sigh*)
Add in the egg. I also added in 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract, which wasn't called for in the recipe, and which I forgot to take a photo of:
Beat in the egg until fluffy:
Measure out 1 1/4 cups of plain flour. (I used gluten free because that's all we had in the house. It worked just as well!)
Add to it 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda, and 1/4 teaspoon of salt:
Mix it all together, then either mix it through the butter mixture with a wooden spoon, or beat it in a little at a time.
Then add in 1 cup of white chocolate chips (technically, the recipe called for 1 cup of semi-sweet dark chocolate chips. But the comments said that you could use any kind of chips or just chopped chocolate):
Mix the chocolate chips/chunks through gently:
Roll it into balls and put it on a baking sheet. Even though my trays were non-stick, I put a sheet of baking paper down, because
Bake at 190 degrees Celcius for 10 minutes.
Cool for a few minutes on the tray, then transfer to a cooling rack.
And enjoy!
 |
| Nom. |
The verdict? They were freaking amazing. It made three dozen cookies, and they were gone inside of 72 hours. They're moist and soft with the perfect amount of crunch around the edges, and courtesy of the chocolate chips and the peanuts (I used crunchy peanut butter). And thanks to the saltiness of the peanut butter, they're not too sweet.
I think I'll try them with dark chocolate chips in the future, just to see how they are. But I really am a fan of the peanut butter/white chocolate combination. It's the bomb.
Are you guys a fan of peanut butter in baking? With dark or white chocolate?
K xx
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
