Lemon & White Chocolate Biscotti

Another recipe from One Smart Cookie. I've still got brownies left from last week (although very few), and biscuits from the week before, so I thought I'd better make something that will last for a while. Having baked dark and rich things for the past couple of weeks (chocolaty brownies, treacly biscuits) I also wanted something a bit lighter. I've tried making biscotti in the past, but wasn't too happy with the results. I think these have turned out a bit better.
The book gives a basic biscotti recipe, and suggestions for a number of variations. Having a lemon in the fruit bowl, and a bar of Green & Black's white chocolate in the cupboard, that's the one I went for.
Forgive the mixture of measurements in the recipe; some are from the book, some are my measured additions.

Recipe:
30 grams unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup caster sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
Zest of 1 lemon, finely grated
100 grams white chocolate (Green & Black's)

Preheat oven to 350f/175C. Line a baking sheet with non-stick baking parchment.
In a large bowl, beat butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla until smooth.
In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt and lemon zest.
Add a few tablespoons of the flour mixture to the wet ingredients. Stir until combined. Add the chopped chocolate and mix well. Continue adding the flour mixture, a few tablespoons at a time, stirring until just combined. If it seems dry, use your hands to complete the mixing until the dough comes together.
Turn the dough out onto a floured surface. Divide in half. Shape each piece into an 8 inch by 3 inch rectangle.
Place the logs, well spaced on the lined baking sheet. They will spread slightly.
Bake for 20 - 25 minutes until firm and starting to crack on top. Remove from the oven and leave to cool for about 15 minutes.
Reduce the oven temperature to 275F/135C
Trim the ends and cut each log into 1/2 - 3/4 inch slices (12 slices per log) with a sharp serrated knife. Place slices cut side down on the baking sheet.
Return to the oven for 15 minutes, then flip over and bake for another 15 minutes.

Chocolate Cherry Brownies

No clear verdict on the cookies from last week. I've decided I'm not keen on them; the treacle in my opinion just overpowers everything else. Duncan, on the other hand, thinks they're really good. If I do make them again, I'll definitely reduce the amount of treacle used.

I got this recipe from the SparkPeople website. It's an American website, so the recipe is in cups. I think I'm getting used to working in them now. The basic recipe is just for plain chocolate brownies, with nothing in them. Naturally I couldn't leave it like that, so after a bit of thought I decided that the bag of dried cherries I had in the cupboard would be a good addition.
The recipe says that the batter will be a bit thick. It's not kidding. I'm used to a brownie batter you can pour out of the bowl; this one you have to dollop spoonfuls of into the pan, and then attempt to spread them out to a single even layer.
Just like there's an absolute commandment for muffins (do NOT overmix), there's one for brownies. What is it? Do NOT overbake. What did I do with these? Overbake. Not by much, according to the timing given in the recipe, but enough so that the brownies were drier than I'd have ideally liked. I'll know better next time. I also didn't use the full quantity of cherries, but I think I should have.

Recipe:
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons instant coffee, dissolved in 1 tablespoon water
1/4 cup butter, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup plain flour
2/3 cup cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
50 grams dried cherries, chopped if large

Preheat oven to 325F/160C. Line an 8 inch square baking pan with non-stick baking parchment.
In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs and sugar until thick and creamy.
Add the dissolved coffee, melted butter and vanilla to the egg mixture. Whisk gently until combined.
In another bowl, mix the flour, cocoa and salt.
Gradually add the dry ingredients and cherries to the egg mixture. The batter will be very thick.
Spread the batter in the prepared pan. Bake for 20 - 25 minutes.
Cool in the pan. cuts into 16 pieces.

Fruit & Nut Double Ginger Cookies

This is the first recipe tried from a new book - One Smart Cookie. It's a low-fat baking book, but not one full of strange ingredients, or recipes you wouldn't want to eat. It also doesn't use artificial replacements for normal ingredients; if you want sugar, you have sugar, not some chemical replacement. My only problem with the book - and it's not a big one - is that being an American/Canadian book, all of the measurements are in cups. Being British, I'm more used to grams/ounces.
Anyway, the recipe I tried was Fruit & Nut Double Ginger Chews. I made a small change to it - not having molasses, I used a mixture of golden syrup and black treacle. Not sure if I got the proportions quite right; I'll have to wait until I get comments from others who try the cookies.

Recipe:
1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup caster sugar
1/4 cup golden syrup
1/2 cup black treacle
1 large egg
2 cups flour
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup raisins
1/3 cup walnuts, chopped
1/4 cup crystallized ginger, finely chopped

Preheat oven to 175C. Line some baking sheets with non-stick baking parchment.
In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Add the egg, then the the golden syrup and treacle. Mix thoroughly.
In another bowl, combine all of the dry ingredients.
Gradually add the dry ingredient mixture, a couple of tablespoons at a time, to the wet ingredients. Stir between each addition to ensure everything is well combined.
Drop large spoonfuls (level tablespoons/heaped dessertspoons) of the mixture onto the baking sheets, making sure they have room to spread. Bake for 12 to 14 minutes, until set.
Unless you have a large oven, you'll probably have to bake these in multiple batches.

Chocolate Pear Muffins

First baking of this year. Getting a bit fed up of Christmas cake. It's very nice (Nigella's Easy Action Christmas cake from Feast, with a few variations of my own in it), but you can have too much of a good thing. I fancied something chocolatey, and had some dried pears left over from the cake, so I thought I'd make some muffins. I've adapted the Blueberry Muffin recipe from the WI Healthy Fast Food book successfully before, so I used that as my base again. This time, I added some cocoa powder and the dried pears, chopped up. They turned out OK - maybe not quite chocolatey enough, and a touch drier than I'd have ideally liked, but then, I'm picky. If I do them again, I'll probably remove a couple of tablespoons of flour, and find some way of upping the chocolate - maybe adding a little coffee?

Recipe:
80 grams unsalted butter
225 grams plain flour
2 tablespoons cocoa powder (I use Green & Blacks)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
115 grams caster sugar
225 ml low-fat yoghurt
1 egg, beaten
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
90 grams dried pears, chopped

Preheat oven to 180C / Gas 4. Put 12 muffin cases into a muffin tin.
Sift the flour, cocoa, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda into a large bowl.
Stir in the sugar
Melt the butter and allow to cool slightly
Beat the egg into the yogurt
Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients
Add the butter and the egg/yogurt mixture to the dry ingredients. Stir to just combine. The mixture will look lumpy. This is fine - overmixing will make the muffins tough.
Add the pears. Gently mix through until evenly combined.
Divide between the 12 muffin cases. Bake for about 30 minutes until the muffins are risen and cooked.