Chunky Peanut & Raisin Cookies

I came across this recipe on Julie van Rosendaal's blog. It reminded me of a recipe of Nigella Lawson's which I'd made a few times and really liked. So I had to try this one. With a few changes. Did it work? Well, there's no picture on this post becuse I can't take one - no cookies left!

Recipe:
125 grams dry roasted peanuts
125 grams sugar
3 tablespoons peanut butter
1 egg white
2 tablespoons skim milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
70 grams plain flour
70 grams plain wholemeal flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
55 grams seedless raisins

Preheat oven to 325F/170C. Line baking trays with non-stick baking parchment.
Place the peanuts in a food processor with a few spoonfuls of sugar. Pulse until the nuts are coarsely chopped.
In a large bowl, beat together the remaining sugar with the peanut butter, egg white, milk and vanilla until smooth.
In a medium bowl, combine the flours, bicarbonate of soda.
Add the remaining ingredients gradually, a bit of each at a time, stirring between each addition until combined.
Roll the dough into balls and place on the baking trays. Flatten the balls quite well into discs.
Bake for about 15 minutes until pale gold in color.
Makes about 18.

Marmalade Cookies

I found a jar of marmalade lurking in the back of the fridge. As toast is a rarity in the house these days, I figured it was a case of either use it up in baking, or throw it away. Luckily, I had this recipe from One Smart Cookie marked as one to try, so this seemed like a good reason to do it.
As usual, I've modified the recipe from volume to metric measurements. How did they turn out? Very well. They have a slightly crisp edge, with a chewy middle. The marmalade is a definite part of the taste, so use one that you like. It might be worth experimenting with different kinds of marmalade too - I may be trying this with a lemon and lime one at some point in the future, although I'll need to change the spicing if I do that.

Recipe:
125 grams porage oats
125 grams plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
50 grams unsalted butter
75 grams demerara sugar
75 grams light muscovado sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
125 grams seedless raisins
100 grams orange marmalade

Preheat oven to 350F/175C. Line baking trays with non-stick baking parchment.
In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg.
In a large bowl, beat together the butter and sugars until well combined. Add the egg and vanilla extract and beat until smooth.
Add the marmalade and mix until combined. Mix in the raisins.
Add the oats and flour alternately, mixing well between each addition.
Drop spoonfuls of the dough onto the baking sheets. Flatten fairly well.
Bake for 15 to 20 minutes until golden.
Makes 24.

Carrot Cake Cookies

Bit of an upside-down day today. We went out for lunch to a very nice place just down the road, from us Windlestraw Lodge. The occasion was Dunk celebrating the 'end' of his diet, and the food there was certainly a fit way to mark it. I'm not going to attempt to review it, but if you are in the area and get the chance to eat there, take it.
Since I knew we'd be eating a richer than usual meal, and as we're still eating through the three Easter eggs (and will be for a few weeks yet), I fancied making more healthy-feeling 'hidden fruit or veg' baking. So this week, it's something picked up from Julie van Rosendaal's blog. It's a recipe for Carrot Cake Cookies, for the new edition of One Smart Cookie - which yes, I'll probably be buying, and donating my current copy to someone else (no idea who yet).
Anyway, as usual I made one or two minor changes. First thing, I've started converting recipes to metric measurements. I brought down the amount of sugar slightly, and used hazelnuts instead of walnuts, because I had them in the cupboard and wanted to use them up. The result? Little drops of carrot cake. These are not firm like you'd expect a cookie to be, but more cakey in texture. The nuts I used give just a hint of nuttiness - using more, or using different nuts would still be fine. The overall verdict? Definitely a recipe to keep.

Recipe:
50 grams unsalted butter
75 grams caster sugar
75 grams dark muscovado sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
100 grams plain flour
100 grams plain wholemeal flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
150 grams grated carrot
75 grams raisins
25 grams chopped hazelnuts

Preheat oven to 350F/175C. Line two baking sheets with non-stick baking parchment.
In a medium bowl, combine the flours, bicarbonate of soda, salt and cinnamon.
In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugars together. Once combined, beat in the egg and vanilla extract.
Add the flour, carrots, raisins and hazelnuts a bit at a time to the wet ingredients, mixing between each addition until just combined.
Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto the baking sheets, flattening each cookie slightly.
Bake for 12 to 14 minutes, until golden on the edges and just cooked in the middle.

Banana Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

After last week's muffins, I felt like cookies this week. Well, actually my first thought was chocolate, but I figured since it was Easter last week, maybe I should leave the chocolate alone, and go with something else. Something that I could convince myself was vaguely healthy, or at least not totally devoid of any nutritional benefit. So flicking through One Smart Cookie, I found a recipe that fitted the bill: banana oatmeal raisin cookies.
Now, I'm not sure these turned out for me as they're supposed to. Oh, they're definitely delicious, but, as you can see from the picture, not exactly a cookie. To me, a cookie is fairly flat. Maybe with some bumps, but definitely a disc of a fairly even thickness across its area. These did not turn out like that; they pretty much stayed in whatever shape they were when they went into the oven. From the directions in the original recipe, I think they are supposed to spread. So maybe I missed something, maybe my modifications changed things a bit. Whatever happened, I certainly enjoyed the results.

Recipe:
175 grams porage oats
100 grams plain flour
25 grams plain wholemeal flour
125 grams raisins
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
50 grams unsalted butter
75 grams caster sugar
75 grams dark muscovado sugar
150 grams mashed banana (about 2 medium bananas)
1 egg white
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350F/175C. Line some baking trays with non-stick baking parchment.
In a medium bowl, combine the oats, flours, raisins, bicarbonate of soda, salt and cinnamon.
In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugars until combined.
Add the bananas, egg white and vanilla to the butter and sugar. Beat until well blended.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet a couple of tablespoonfuls at a time, mixing each until only just combined.
Drop generous spoonfuls of the dough onto the prepared trays. Flatten the cookies slightly.
Bake for 12 to 14 minutes, until the edges are golden and the cookies are just set.

Rhubarb & Custard

I was supposed to be too busy with work this weekend to do much baking. Luckily, two weeks ago I started a small experiment for just this kind of situation. When I made the last batch of chocolate chip cookies, I froze half of them unbaked. So today, it was time to see how they would bake.
Rather than waste the whole batch, I thought it best to try just a few. The unfrozen batch were originally baked at 175C, but with these being frozen, I figured a lower temperature might be better - to allow the dough to thaw all the way through before the outside baked. So the oven was preheated to 160C, and the cookies went in for a few minutes longer than they would have done unfrozen - 15 minutes rather than the original 12. The result? Well, they didn't spread as much as the unfrozen batch, but I still ended up with 4 perfectly yummy cookies. With another 5 still in the freezer for later.
What's this got to do with Rhubarb & Custard? Well nothing much, except that while I knew I wouldn't have time for actual baking today, I didn't want to do absolutely nothing. In a magazine, I'd seen a recipe for a baked custard. Since it didn't look like it would take too long, I though I'd try it. And with some stewed rhubarb (with just enough sugar to sweeten it, but not so much that it takes away all the sharpness), it was exactly the comforting dessert I needed. I'm pretty sure I'll be making this again. It seems like it would lend itself to variation too - different flavourings in the custard, maybe something baked into the custard. Or even a simple brulee topping.

Recipe:
200 millilitres skim milk
1 egg
1 tablespoon caster sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 160C
Put the milk in a pan and heat gently until fairly warm. Meanwhile, whisk together the egg, sugar and vanilla extract in a jug.
When the milk is warm, pour it slowly into the mixture in the jug, whisking as you do so.
Put 2 150ml capacity ramekins into a roasting tray or other deep sided baking tray. Divide the custard between the two ramekins.
Pour hot water into the tray, to come about half way up the side of the ramekins.
Put the tray into the oven and bake for 40 minutes, until the custard is set but still with a slight wobble.
Serve with some stewed rhubarb on top.

Corn Muffins/Chocolate Chip Cookies

Two lots of baking done this week, one savoury and one sweet. Both of them seem to have turned out well; they certainly met with approval.
The corn muffins first. This is corn as in cornmeal - polenta. Now, I've made cornbread before, a long time ago, and I no longer have the recipe I used. So when I came across a recipe for these (fairly low calorie) cornmeal muffins in a book, I wanted to give them a go. Of course, the recipe called for one thing I've never been able to find - buttermilk. Normally, I'd substitute yogurt, but here I thought I'd try a tip I came across, and use the same quantity of milk mixed with a bit of lemon juice (1 tablespoon lemon juice made up to 1 cup with milk is, I believe, the suggested mix). It seemed to work, although I didn't use exactly that mix.
The mix seemed OK, although the muffins didn't rise quite as much as I'd hoped - maybe I did overwork it. They also stuck to the muffin cases a bit, so if (when) I do this again, I think I'll bake it in a cake pan lined with non-stick parchment, and cut it into pieces. They certainly went very well, still warm out of the oven, with the lunchtime soup.

This isn't the first time I've made these chocolate chip cookies, and if my experience with them so far is anything to go by, it's a very forgiving recipe. Cookie recipes that make more than can be fitted on a single tray need to get baked in multiple batches in my oven. Last time, the first batch turned out pretty perfectly. Luckily, as they were destined for my Dad. However, the second trayful weren't so lucky. After taking the first lot out, I'd done my usual thing of turning the oven up to a higher temperature than is required for the baking, so that when I open the door to put the tray in, it falls down to the correct temperature. I must have been distracted, because I turned it up more than usual. And forgot to turn it down again when the cookies went in. Oh dear. Well, they got whipped out of the oven a bit before their time was up, a bit browner that they should have been. And they still tasted OK. Some of them were on the verge of being singed, but nothing too bad. These went to a different set of recipients, who were apparently quite happy with them.
Nothing so dramatic with this lot. I made another change to the original recipe, besides my original substitution of golden syrup for corn syrup; the use of part wholemeal and part plain flour. I thought it might give an extra bit of texture and flavour to the cookes. It seemed to work. Another thing I'm trying with this recipe is freezing half the mix to be baked later. No idea if it will work or not, but I wanted to give it a go.

Recipes:
Corn Muffins (from 'The 1200 Calorie a Day Menu Cookbook, Nancy Hughes)
2/3 cup plain flour
1/2 cup cornmeal (I used quick-cook polenta)
2 teaspoons caster sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup skim milk
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 egg white
2 teaspoons vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 450F/230C. Put 8 muffin cases in a muffin tin.
Place the milk and lemon juice together in a bowl. Note: you can use 3/4 cup plus one tablespoon fat-free buttermilk instead of the milk and lemon juice.
In a mixing bowl combine the flour, polenta, sugar, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt.
Whisk the egg white and oil into the milk.
Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients. Pour in the wet ingredients and mix until just combined.
Divide the mixture between the 8 muffin cases.
Bake for 15 minutes. Remove from the tray immediately.

Chocolate Chip Cookies (based on one from One Smart Cookie, Julie van Rosendaal)
50 grams unsalted butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
2 tablespoons golden syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup plain flour
1/2 cup wholemeal flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
70 grams dark chocolate, chopped (I used Green & Black's)

Preheat oven to 350F/175C. Line two baking sheets with non-stick baking parchment.
In a large bowl beat butter and sugar together until well combined - the mixture will end up with the consistency of wet sand.
Add the vanilla, syrup, and egg. Beat together until smooth.
In another bowl combine the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt. Add the flour mixture and chocolate chips, a third at a time, to the sugar mixture, stirring after each addition until well combined.
Drop spoonfuls of the dough, well spaced, onto the baking sheets. Bake for 12 - 15 minutes, until golden and the outside is set but the middle is still slightly soft.

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.