What’s Cooking – Christmas Gingerbread Man Cookies

The Christmas season is in a full bloom so it is time to get some festive food ready. What can be more festive than some tasty little gingerbread cookies?

The recipe I want to share with you today is from The Christmas 3D Cookie Kit from Parragon. The kit contains 3D cookie cutters (so you can make your own 3D snowman and 3D Christmas tree) and a recipe book with a fantastic selection of Christmas cookies.

The recipe I’ve chosen was originally for a Mini Gingerbread House Cookies, but we thought that a gingerbread man shaped cookies will be a better choice 🙂

Ingredients:

125g butter

2tbp golden syrup

175g light muscovado sugar

300g self-rising flour

2tbsp ground ginger

1 large egg

Method:

Prepare 2 large baking sheets, ideally pre-lined with a baking paper.

Heat the oven to 160C.

Place the butter and the golden syrup in a pan and heat gently, stirring all the time until melted.

Remove the pan from the heat, add sugar and stir until dissolved.

Sift the flour and ginger into a large bowl and make a well in the middle ready for the wet ingredients.

Pour in the warm, wet ingredients and add the beaten egg into the mix.

Stir thoroughly to form a smooth dough.

Wrap it in a cling film and chill in the fridge for about 20 minutes.

Remove your dough from the fridge and prepare to roll it out; ideally you want your rolled dough to be about 5mm thick.

Cut desired shapes using a cookie cutter or an upside down glass if you want to make a classic round shape or even a knife if all else fails.

Transfer your cut cookies to your baking sheets.

Chill in the fridge for a further 10 minutes.

Bake in earlier preheated oven for about 12-15 minutes or until firm and lightly brown.

Remove from the oven and allow them to cool down.

Now the fun can begin…

It is time to decorate!

If you are good with decorating you can make your own royal icing (just mix 150g of icing sugar with 2tsp of white egg powder and 2 tbsp of cold water)… I am not a master decorator so we used shop bought icing pens to make this job easier 😉

Happy baking!

What’s Cooking – Quick and Easy Cinnamon Biscuits

From time to time we all get cravings, sometimes we can satisfy them, sometimes we can’t. One day last week sometime around 11pm I developed a huge craving to have some fresh baked cookies. We had guests over so it wasn’t exactly sleeping time yet so we decided to bake something. Obviously we knew that this had to be a quick and easy recipe as no one wanted to start a long preparation process at that time of the night. We settled on a batch of Quick and Easy Cinnamon Biscuits. As there were four people in the kitchen including a fellow foodie blogger Iwona from Smakowite Jadlo, we had a lovely warm biscuits in no time!

So if you ever get that feeling you must have a cookie now, I would highly recommend this recipe.

Ingredients:

• 160g flour
• 120g soft butter
• 3tbs icing sugar
• 1.5tsps cinnamon

Method:

To start preheat your oven to 180C and using some baking parchment line two large baking trays.

In a large bowl mix all your dry ingredients: flour, cinnamon and sugar. Add soften, cubed cutter and combine until you have a nice smoo0th and even dough.

Now depending on the shape of your cookies you can either:

– Form small balls which you will shape into roundish biscuits with your hands.

or (my preferred way)

– Roll your mixture flat using a rolling pin and then just use a cookie cutter to achieve your desired shape.

Bake in your earlier preheated oven for about 15-20 minutes or until firm to the touch.

Remove the biscuits and place on a wire cooling rack so they are allowed to cool.

Decorate if needed or desired.

They are perfect for storing, as long as you put them into an airtight container of course.

Now remember there were four of us in the kitchen and we all wanted something just a little bit different, we just couldn’t seem to settle on just one flavour, biscuits by committee! As it is a democratic household we ended up baking four batches of biscuits in four different flavours 😉 So if cinnamon is not for you, you can try adding some grated almonds or chocolate or dry coconut (our coconut biscuits also had an orange food colouring, I am quite unsure what we were thinking at the time but I suspect that a degree of tiredness may have resulted in the wrong bowl receiving the colouring. Though witnesses were few and far between…)

In the end for what amounted to less than an hour of fun and good humour in the kitchen, delayed somewhat by the deliberations over flavours, resulted in a huge box of awesome crunchy and super tasty biscuits. Possessing a wonderful snap when you bite into them and having a texture very similar to shortbread they are now a permanent feature on our “bestest recipe list”.

What’s Cooking – Apple and Oat Cookies

Home-made cookies always make for a lovely treat and kids love them but what about sticking some goodies into them? This quick and easy recipe for Apple and Oat Cookies is a perfect combination of both – it makes for a perfect treat and it is full of good ingredients (more or less) 😉

This is yet another recipe from Make, Bake, Cookies – The Recipe Book I told you about some time ago. These one are from chapter 2 – soft & chewy and yes indeed they come out just as intended – nice and soft with lovely chewy middle. They are really nice with a cup of coffee, or milk or even a hot chocolate and make for a perfect snack.

So how do you make them?

Easy… let’s start with the ingredients:

• 2 large apples, peeled and cored
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 225g unsalted butter, softened plus a little extra for greasing
• 100g brown sugar
• 100g caster sugar
• 1 egg, beaten
• 225g self raising flour
• 150g rolled oats
• 85g raisins

Method:

Preheat oven to 180C / 350F or a Gas Mark 4.

Grease three large baking sheets.

Dice the apples and toss in the lemon juice.

Place the butter and sugars in a bowl and beat together until creamy. Gradually beat in the egg. Sift the flour and add the oats, raisins and apples. Mix until thoroughly combined.

Place dessertspoonfuls of the mixture on the prepared baking sheets spacing them well apart.

Bake in the preheated oven for 12-15 minutes or until golden around the edges.

Leave to cool on the baking sheet for a few minutes, and then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

That’s all.

Nothing else to do but eat 🙂

Do you think they would count as one of your 5 a day?

What’s Cooking – Chocolate Chip Cookies

Today I have for you yet again a great recipe from Make, Bake, Cookies the Recipe Book… this time we tried the Chocolate Chip Cookies.

This is a quick and easy recipe and it will make a perfect treat even for hard to please family members.

Our cookies came out crunchy on the outside and a little chewy on the inside – they were just perfect.

So what will you need to bake them?

Ingredients:

• 175g plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 125g margarine or unsalted butter, melted
• 85g light brown sugar
• 55g caster sugar
• 125g plain chocolate chips
• 1 egg, beaten
• ½ tsp vanilla extract

Method:

Preheat the oven to 190C.

Lightly grease two baking sheets… or four 😉 (One lot of ingredients will make 8 large cookies, so if you have a large family, you might want to double it)

Sift the flour and baking powder into a large mixing bowl.

Add the remaining ingredients and beat until well combined.

Place tablespoon of the mixture on the prepared baking sheets. Don’t forget to space them apart to allow some spreading and for growing whilst in the oven.

Bake in preheated oven for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown.

Leave to cool on the baking tray for a few minutes, and then move to a wire rack to cool completely.

That’s all.

You are all done. Now make yourself a nice cup of tea or a mug of coffee and enjoy your creations.

What’s Cooking – Traditional Shortbread

Did you ever wonder why shortbread is so expensive? We did and we have no answer to this question. It is easy to make, the ingredients aren’t very expensive yet when you look at shortbread packets on the shelves in a store they cost a fortune… why?

Anyway, due to the fact that we really like shortbread and don’t really fancy spending so much money on them in the shop we decided to make our own… helped by the fact we found a lovely recipe for it in our Make, Bake, Cookies the Recipe Book 🙂

Ingredients list:

• 165g plain flour
• 55g caster sugar
• 115g unsalted butter’ cut into small pieces
• Pinch of salt
• Icing sugar for dusting

And that is all she wrote…

Method:

Preheat the oven to a nice cool 150C.

Line a baking sheet with some baking paper.

Place the flour, salt and sugar into a large bowl and mix together. Add the butter and rub into the dry ingredients with your fingertips. Continue to work the mixture until it forms soft dough. Do not overwork the dough or your finished biscuits will be tough.

Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface to form a 20cm circle.

Transfer it to prepared baking sheet and pinch the edges or use a fork to make small groves all around the edge.

Use a fork and stab your dough a little creating some nice pattern 😉 This allows for steam to escape and helps with the cooking process.

Then using a knife, lightly mark the dough into eight equal pieces, which will create a breaking line for the future.

Bake in the preheated oven for around 45-50 minutes or until the shortbread is firm to the touch and is just coloured.

Leave to cool on a baking sheet for a few minutes.

Sprinkle with sugar.

Cut / break into pieces and move onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Enjoy! We did!

What’s Cooking – Chocolate and Hazelnut Drops from Make, Bake, Cookies

Chocolate and Hazelnut Drops from Make, Bake, Cookies

So a few days ago we finally got around to trying one of the recipes from Make, Bake, Cookies – The Recipe Book (if you missed it (and if so, why did you miss it?) you can read the book review here).

I wanted to try the button cookies or even the peanut cookies but due to the availability of ingredients we ended up baking some Chocolate and Hazelnut Drops instead. They looked like a straightforward and easy recipe to follow.

I must admit it was a good choice.

Ingredients:

• 225g unsalted butter, softened
• 140g caster sugar
• 1 egg yolk, lightly beaten
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 225g plain flour
• 55g cocoa powder
• Pinch of salt
• 55g ground hazelnuts
• 55g plain chocolate chips
• 4 tbsp chocolate hazelnut spread

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 190C / 375F / Gas Mark 5.
2. Line two baking sheets with baking paper.
3. Put the butter and sugar into a bowl and mix well with a wooden spoon, then beat in the egg yolk and vanilla extract. Sift the flour, cocoa and salt into the mixture, then add the ground hazelnuts and chocolate chips and stir until thoroughly combined. Careful not to over-mix though or you will make the cookies tough.
4. Scooping up tablespoonfuls of the mixture, shape them into balls with your hands, and then put them on the prepared baking sheets, spaced well apart. Use the dampened handle of a wooden spoon to make a hollow in the centre of each cookie.
5. Bake in preheated oven for 12-15 minutes. Mark wasn’t paying attention and grilled the first batch, he was so confused as to why they were taking so long to cook, till he realised, what a Muppet! He blames the new cooker and the confusing dials, of which there are only two I might add. On the plus side they did taste lovely, but the second batch cooked in the oven were truly divine.
6. Leave to cool on the baking sheets for a few minutes, then transfer to wire racks to cool completely.
7. When the cookies are cold, fill the hollows with your favourite chocolate spread.

Enjoy!

And remember they are baked not grilled 😉

Parragon Book Buddy – Make Bake Cookies, the Recipe Book

If you are reading my blog regularly you know that we are cookbook crazy. There are never too many cookbooks. Some of them are better than others, some of them are used much more often than others but they can all bring something to the table 😉

I have a new cookbook – Make Bake Cookies, The Recipe Book and I totally adore it. I remember when the post man brought it to me, after opening the parcel I immediately had to send them a thank you email stating “this must be the most beautiful cookbook we own”. It really is that pretty.

Sporting a hard cover with pages shaped like cookies marking each chapter. The Make Bake Cookies, The Recipe Book contains five chapters + an introduction. Surprisingly the introduction is very useful; you can find in there all you need to know about the basics, your star ingredients, essential equipment, icing, piping, storage and my favourite parts – the secret to success and baked to perfection.

Each of the five chapters covers a different type of cookie. So we have:

• Cookie jar favourites
• Soft & chewy
• Crisp & crumbly
• Fun & frosted

And last but not least

• Something a bit special

Make Bake Cookies, The Recipe Book is printed on wipe clean shiny paper. Every single recipe has a clear image and clear instructions on how to achieve the final look. This is the main reason why I am so drawn into this book. For me when cooking / baking pictures are very important, especially when I am making something for the first time. It is nice to have something to aim for and later on compare it to. I have studied this book many times now and I have picked my favourite recipe: button cookies.

The recipe seems very easy and I love the look of the finished cookies. As soon as we get some food colouring I will attempt to make them.

My second pick from the book are peanut butter cookies. Again something quick and easy… I have no excuse not to bake them as all ingredients are already present in the house, so… I will get baking and share with you my experience very shortly.

If you think that Make Bake Cookies, The Recipe Book might be perfect for you, you can purchase it from Amazon. It retails at £14.00 but it is currently on sale and its current price is down to £9.18.

Happy baking!

***

Make Bake Cookies, The Recipe Book:
ISBN 978-1-4723-4053-5
Published by Parragon Books Ltd in 2014
Part of Love Food
Number of pages: 187
RRP: £14
Hardback

* I received this book for free from Parragon as a part of my Book Buddy pack.