Spice Up Your Life II

My sister makes the most amazing stuffing for Christmas, with gingerbread and bacon, which in itself sounds like something you'd dream of, whether in nightmare-, or day-dream form I'll leave for you to decide. It's a Nigella recipe, though, so you can imagine it's really pretty marvellous! (And it is!)

But you see, since discovering that gluten is not a friend of my internal workings, things like this are either put in the ‘No Can Do Any More' list, or relegated to the ‘Maybe On A Special Occasion If You're Lucky And The Planets Have Aligned In A Positive Manner' list, because GF gingerbread cake is impossible to find in the wilds of Morrisons, and the few recipes I had previously found looked faff-tastic to say the least. UNTIL (cue the lightbulb of discovery - ping) I stumbled across this recipe at Gluten-Free On A Shoestring. Oh me, oh my, oh just put it in my mouth already oh.

Now, in the spirit of full disclosure, I made this before Christmas for the afore-mentioned gingerbread stuffing but I forgot to document it in the style in which you're now accustomed. So for you, yes that includes you lurking at the back there, seeing as it's been a while since I bombarded you with a GF recipe translated into my own inimitable language style of occasional criticising commentary and Fake Food Blogger™ WTFery, here's a little morsel to keep you going...

Gluten Free Gingerbread Cake from glutenfreeonashoestring.com

You need:

350g all-purpose gluten-free flour

1 ¼ tsps xantham gum (don't add if your flour already contains some)

1 ½ tsps baking soda

½ tsp baking powder

2 tsps ground cinnamon

2 tsps ground ginger

½ tsp salt

100g granulated sugar

109g light brown sugar

2 tbsps or 42g molasses (I used black treacle)

6 tbsps or 126g pure maple syrup

4 tbsps or 84g honey

112g unsalted butter, melted and cooled

1 egg (at room temp, beaten)

1 cup or 225ml warm water

2 tbsps or 28g vegetable oil

We ALL know how much I am not a fan of being asked to pre-heat an oven that will stay pre-heating while you let your dough rise for 18 hours/freeze-form your cookies overnight, and I am pleased to say that this was not the case here, as having made this before I knew it was a relatively quick make. Yes indeed, I pre-heated my oven to 175℃ like a boss.

Then getting out a large bowl (:: sobs quietly, remembering her trusty mixing bowls that were donated to charity back in NL ::) you fill it with the flour, xantham gum, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, salt and granulated sugar and give it a jolly good mix.

Once it's all jolly well mixed, add the brown sugar and mix it up again, making sure to break up any lumps.

Next you need to add the molasses (treacle), maple syrup, honey, butter and egg, “mixing to combine after each addition". Or, if you're like me, you'll measure out all the treacle, maple syrup and honey into one bowl before adding them to the dry ingredients in one sticky go, forgetting that the honey will layer at the bottom, the maple syrup will lie nonchalantly on top, and the treacle will refuse to have anything to do with either of them and keep itself to itself in the centre of the bowl. I think treacle may have issues.

After mixing all the ingredients up, do NOT do as it did, and add the mix as-is to the prepared loaf tin. It will look like this - a thick, dough-like consistency, that, yes, tastes amazing (don't judge - the spoon had to get washed anyway), but doesn't look quite right. 

It looks like this because it still needed the addition of warm water and vegetable oil. 

I suppose the only good thing about this mistake was that it came straight out of the papered tin in one glop, leaving nary a gingery skid-mark on the paper.

No, this is what it's supposed to look like. Probably.

Possibly. The directions say that the batter will be thick, but I think the emphasis should be on ‘batter' as opposed to ‘thick', because otherwise you'll be left with something like I had to begin with - thick, yes, batter, no.

Then you place the tin in the pre-heated oven and bake for forty minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. 

...

...

Now, when it says forty minutes, you may find that that's not enough time, because your tin might not have been big enough and your cake might look baked on top, but the rest has the wobble of Homer Simpson's belly after being poked by the doctor in ‘The Simpsons'. This is not a good look for a baked cake. I ended up de-Homer-fying it for a total of seventy minutes. Yup. 

It did come out looking like this, though,

and smelling absolutely scrumptious!

You can tell, however, that the baking wasn't one hundred percent efficient, as on slicing in to it you can clearly see the makings of an almost-crust around the edges, just drier than the rest due to it being in the oven for so long.

It does taste DIVINE, though. And the consistency is squidgy enough that it reminds me of bought gingerbread cake. Except this is better. No, really, it is! 

The next time I make this, once I've saved up enough pennies to afford the maple syrup (oy, that stuff is dear) I'll split the batter between two tins and see how much a difference that makes with the baking time and consistency, but until then I shall be content to treat myself to a slice of this delectably squidgy cake and slather it in butter, just how my Granny used to make it for us when we were wee!

In A Bit Of A P̶i̶c̶k̶l̶e̶ Jam

Facebook memories, or ‘On This Day', or whatever it's called, has been rolled out to nearly everyone I know there except me, it seems. No, well, I tell a lie. I had it for one day, then after 24 hours was primly told that I was yet again amongst the undeserving. 

Sorry, this feature isn't available

Nicola, thanks for coming to see your memories. Currently, this feature isn't available to everyone.

Pff. Not that I believe most of my memories are worthy of another trawl through the timeline, but it would be nice not to be the only one of my friends who doesn't even have the chance to annoy everyone with something that happened on this day, eleven years ago. Just as an example...

But I can make a blog post. If I had a white cat sitting on my lap just now, I would be stroking it, and chuckling in a menacing manner!

For you see, eleven years ago today I fell down some worn and uneven steps outside a Portuguese church and broke my foot. It's a long story involving a too-long dress, too-high heels, and the heady feeling of pride that comes after singing a really good concert, followed rapidly by a tumble down a dozen or so ancient steps in front of the entire audience who had only just vacated the venue before me.

Anyway, I'm digressing slightly, because this post will actually be about sweet tomato jam, and not my phenomenal powers of being able to embarrass myself so proficiently in front of others...

Wait! There's a link! Honest!  The connection between this and my unenviable gift of self-mortification is that whilst staying in Portugal for rehearsals I came across the most wondrous taste explosion that is tomato jam. (It's a tenuous link, sure, but it's a link none-the-less!) It was unlike any other jam I had tasted (and I have tasted many, as my mother is a jam- and jelly-making machine). But tomato? My northern tomatoes-are-exotic-and-grown-in-greenhouses-and-not-to-be-wasted-en-masse mind was blown. Or at least blown until my foot threw a spanner in the old memory-making apparatus making all flashbacks pertaining to the trip centre on excruciating pain, and not exceedingly good jam. 

The anniversary of Tumble-Gate coincided neatly with a rather effusive ripening of tomatoes of all shapes and sizes in Dad's greenhouse. On the whole we're not a huge eaters of tomatoes. We'll crunch through them in salads, fry the odd few with Sunday breakfast, and my Dad is rather fond of red onion and tomato sarnies, but we'll usually use up what becomes ripe before it becomes the dreaded no-longer-ripe. Faced with a couple of kilos of ruby beauties all ready to be picked at once and not knowing what to do with them is when my memory kicked in, by-passed the foot fiasco, and settled squarely on breakfast in Portugal: toast, and tomato jam.

Sweet Tomato Jam with Honey and Vanilla from NY Times Cooking

Needless to say, I don't have the actual Portuguese recipe, but this was the only sweet tomato jam recipe I could find online (there are many chutneys and savoury recipes to be found, though), and luckily the sweet version tastes just as I remember it! 

You need:

1360g (3lbs) tomatoes (I used a variety of... um, varieties.)

240 ml honey

300g granulated sugar

2 vanilla pods (split)

½ tsp lemon zest (although I just used the whole lemon. Who only uses that tiny amount???)

2 tbsp lemon juice

pinch of sea salt

½ tsp freshly chopped rosemary (not part of the written recipe, but added because our Portuguese accommodation was surrounded by wild rosemary bushes and I find rosemary and tomato a lovely combination at any time!)

The first thing you need to do is blanch the tomatoes. Well, it's not the first thing on the linked recipe, but I find tomato skin to be nasty in home-made soups and presumed it would be nasty to find in jams!

Firstly I cut little crosses into the bottom of the tomatoes to make the skins a little easier to remove after their water torture.

Then, in batches, I added tomatoes to boiling water for thirty to sixty seconds, then plunged them into ice-cold water for thirty seconds, and the skins were easy-peasy to peel off.

I'm not saying it wasn't messy, because it was, but still a lot easier than trying out non-existent mad knife skillz attempting to skin the poor wee things cold. Unless, of course, you have actual Mad Knife Skillz™, then please, have at it!

Oh, and don't forget to prepare your jam-jars by washing them in hot soapy water, rinsing them well, then placing them in a decently hot oven (around 100C I reckon) to dry completely. Having hot jars ready for the jam also means that there is less chance of a jar exploding when decanting the hot stuff. Double whammy - scalding hot jam, and sharp shards of glass. Heat your jars, people!!

The next part is truly easy, just time-consuming, as all you need to do it add everything to a decent-sized pot and simmer-boil away until that time when a wrinkle test gives you a positive result. I was stirring for about an hour until I saw the light and added the rest of the lemon juice to help thicken it to a decent consistency, but YYMV!

Once wrinkly jam has been attained, take out the vanilla pods, and ladle the good stuff carefully into the prepared jars, add the papers and other jam-making paraphernalia, and leave to cool. Or, alternatively, burn your the roof of your mouth on a fresh spoonful because the smell was too intoxicating not to have a taste right then and there.

10/10 Would burn again.

Spice Up Your Life

Apple sauce is ubiquitous in the Netherlands; a veritable staple of Dutch ‘cuisine'. There are a couple of types I see on supermarket shelves (although many different brands... shelves and shelves of the stuff, metres long, reaching from the floor to the ceiling) - the first being what I call the baby food apple sauce - pure mush - and the second being a more robust, chunky pulp-like consistency. Toddler, as opposed to baby food. I buy a jar from time to time, usually because it's on offer, and I like to pretend that I'd actually use it to cook with rather than end up just eating it from the jar with a big spoon. You will be unsurprised to learn that I have ended up eating it from a jar with a big spoon every time. Until now.

I had read somewhere, probably on Pinterest, that apple sauce could be used in baking as a replacement for something. Eggs. Or perhaps butter. To be honest, I have yet to find a recipe (although my search to date has only included cookies and cakes) that doesn't also include both eggs and butter along with the apple sauce, so I may need to open up my research a little wider. Perhaps to scones and pancakes...

But I did come across this little gem:

Applesauce Oatmeal Cookies from Six Sisters' Stuff

You need:

1 cup or 255g apple-sauce (Baby, not toddler version)

1 cup or 250g brown sugar (I used dark brown)

1 egg
½ cup or 120g butter, softened

2 cups or 244g GF flour

1 cup or 90g GF oatmeal

1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp ground nutmeg

½ tsp ground cloves (I used 2 tsps of speculaas spices instead of the 3 different spices mentioned in the recipe, because the smell is just heavenly!)

1 cup or 175g chocolate chips (optional)

Excuse me, though - I need to recover from reading the parenthetical option of adding chocolate chips to the recipe. Optional choc chips: surely an oxymoron. :: looks at photo above :: Hmm, interesting. It appears the only moron here is me.

There are only 2 paragraphs to the directions. Or really, one paragraph and one sentence. I was so taken aback by this simplicity that I decided to preheat my oven to 190C (375F) right at the beginning when I was asked. Brevity moves us in mysterious ways.

You're asked to mix together the apple-sauce, the brown sugar, the butter and the egg. That's it. Mix together. No ‘use a marble bowl made from stone that can only be found in one rocky outcrop of the Andes'. No ‘using a wooden spoon that has been handled for no less than four generations of baking women in your family'. Which may possibly be why this happened:

I used a hand-mixer first, but El-Cheapo model that it is, it merely chopped the softened butter into teeny-tiny pieces, refusing to, you know, actually mix the ingredients together. Even my trusty wooden spoon (one generation old) wasn't capable of remedying the situation, so I just had to hope that somehow everything would come right when I added all the dry ingredients (excluding the choc chips). Or, at worst, the problem would be well hidden amongst the oats and flour.

What you can't see can't hurt you, right? The dough should be firm, we're told, so adding more flour may be an option if somehow your consistency is a little... off. After folding in the choc chips (notice it's written plain and simple in the directions. None of your namby-pamby ‘optional' here) you are invited to scoop heaping tablespoonfuls onto a greased cookie sheet, and bake for 13 to 15 minutes until golden.

Let me say here that this mixture is thick and really keeps its form well. I mean really keeps its form... I made three sheet-worths of cookies. The first, as seen above, had your plain ol' spoonfuls dolloped onto the tray. They came out looking much the same shape as they went in. Cookie dollops. The second tray contained artful 'squished down by a fork' morsels, that also came out looking pretty much as they went in.

I was nearing the top of a not-so-steep learning curve by the third tray, and not only did I artfully squish the cookies with a fork, but also neatened them up a little around the edges. 

A little.

goldilocks cookies: dollops, squished, and just right

Just to let you know, this quantity of dough gives you a metric sh*t-ton of cookies. which is roughly three dozen cookies in layman's terms. They're not crunchy cookies by any means, perhaps the legacy of the apple-sauce? but they're tasty, moreish, and spice-alicious, for all that. 

This Site Uses Cookies

I will always be the first to let you know that cooking and I are not the closest of friends; au contraire, we are mere nodding acquaintances at best. The Fake Food Blogger™ in me does like to give things a go now and again, just to see whether my doing (there is no try, according to Yoda) has actually improved not just the finished product, but the actual creative process, too, practice making perfect, and all that.

That being said, my cooking and baking ‘research' to date hasn't really given me much in the way of empirical evidence pointing to any significant improvement, unless you count and compare my very first attempt at GF baking (an unmitigated disaster That Which Must Not Be Named) to my last effort - Lemon Meltaway Cookies (a triumph in the face of icing sugar adversity) - but I think it's fair to say that although my learning curve may still be a tad on the horizontal side, I will endeavour to keep trying doing. 

For science.

Triple Chocolate Buckwheat Cookies from Nigella.com (And the Simply Nigella series)

The first thing I noticed about the recipe was that it was written in a charmingly vernacular style. Well, in the charming vernacular style of Nigella Lawson. You'll know by now that badly written anything grinds my gears, as Peter Griffin is wont to say, so I was pleasantly surprised to find it sounding in my head just as if Nigella herself was giving me her instructions. That in itself may be due to the script writer for her programme perhaps also being the person in charge of writing the prose for her website and books, a PR dream-come-true in respects to product management, or it might just be that Nigella is really like her on-screen persona and it's her dictation that becomes everything we hear and read. I'd quite like to think that if we were to partake of a glass of wine in her kitchen while she puttered about making something yummy, it would sound exactly like what we see on screen, be it TV or monitor. Then again, I might just be falling for yet another marketing ploy, but I'm happy to take a tumble in this instance!

So, you need:

150g dark chocolate chips

125g dark chocolate

125g buckwheat flour

25g cocoa (sieved)

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

½ tsp salt

60g unsalted butter

125g soft dark brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla paste (or extract)

2 large eggs (fridge cold)

Your first instruction is to ‘clatter' the chocolate chips on a dish and place them in the fridge (on the assumption that the colder they are when finally added to the mixture, the more the chance they'll retain their semblance of chocolate chip-ness once baked.) Fair enough. I'm already sufficiently charmed by the language that I'd probably do anything she asked further down the recipe, whether it was cookie-related or not...

And because it wasn't the first thing she asked us to do, I was happy to pre-heat my wee oven to 180 degrees and line a couple of baking sheets with parchment paper. You can see how far under Nigella's spell I've already fallen... Or you can see how contrary I can be... Take your pick.

You're then asked to break up the chocolate bar into chunks and melt it either in the microwave, or in a bain-marie. I chose the former, and easier option.

Well, I say easier option, but it's not idiot-proof. A wee word of advice: don't presume that just because the first minute hasn't been sufficient to melt the chocolate, that a second won't set the whole thing on fire. That I'm speaking here from experience will only confirm my relationship with the cooking Gods. I pray I won't reduce my kitchen to ashes; they ignore my pleas. I'm beginning to suspect that they don't accept burnt offerings.

Once you've managed to fan most of the smoke out of the kitchen window, you can add the buckwheat flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt to a bowl, and give them a good mix, then in another bowl cream the sugar, butter, and vanilla extract together until it's ‘a caramel colour, and fluffy' whatever that means. Mine was not in any way whatsoever fluffy. It was creamed, but I suspect more in the sense of having been beaten up by a bully, than in any way baking related...

You then mix in the slightly cooled-down chocolate to the creamed sugar and butter, (or however much runny stuff you've managed to salvage from the fiery ball of chocolate hell) and then add the eggs one-by-one. Once everything is nicely combined, you can add the dry ingredients, finishing off by folding in the chilled chocolate chips.

You're then asked to ‘dollop' tablespoons of the dough onto the lined baking sheets (ah, she's talking my particular type of cooking language) although I made smaller cookies using heaped teaspoonfuls of the dough, because no matter how I try I can't just have one cookie, and making them smaller means that a) I'm not eating the same calories by partaking of a couple of mouthfuls of cookie bliss than I am if I were to pig-out out on two dinner-plate cookies, and b) technically they'll last longer because I get on average around thirty or so cookies per recipe. (I say technically, but I really mean in theory. What can I say, sometimes a girl needs a little cookie therapy.)

Once dolloped, bake them in the oven for nine to ten minutes, bringing them out when they are just getting set at the edges but still soft to the touch and looking undercooked elsewhere. (I reckon if you're wanting a more flat biscuit cookie than the soft squishy version of this recipe, you can add a minute or two to the baking time.)

Once they're out, you leave them on the baking sheet for another ten minutes before transferring them to a rack to finish cooling completely.

Then NOM, because these babies are squishy chocolatey heaven!

Nice one, Nigella! Your Simply series may have been panned, but you still inspire the naughty cookie baker in all of us. Or at least me. Mmm, cookies...

Fifty Shades Of Lemon

Whenever I take photos with the camera on my phone that include white surfaces or white objects, I'm reminded of a scene from ‘Girl With A Pearl Earring' where Vermeer asks Griet what colours she sees in the clouds outside. If he were to ask me what colours I saw in my photo of a white tea-towel, or the bright white enamelled cover of my table-top hob, I'd be hard pressed just to give Griet's first and simple answer. For I see pink, and purple, and green in my white, but not because I have an artists' eye, but because, really, I do see pink, and purple, and green. My lens appears to have such a hatred for white that it consistently replaces them with the palest of blush pinks in the middle, and an apple white to the edges over which the Dulux paint company circa 1985 would have cried with joy.

I say this not with any real purpose but to apologise for the lack of photographic consistency in my fake food-blogger posts. My tea-towels really are crisp and white, well, apart from the inevitable blue patterning (I'm a sucker for blue and white household goods - I'd be up to my eyeballs in Delftware if I could afford it) and my cooker top is scrubbed white on a daily... quite often. But until I'm in command of proper photographic equipment, I shall have to put up with pastel back-drops. And, unfortunately, dear reader, so shall you!

But to get back on message (apologies - I've been watching some re-runs of The West Wing) today, in our continuing adventures in Fake Food Blogging™, we are venturing away from the comfortable shores of chocolate bay and setting sail for climes of a more tart nature.

Yeah, okay, we're making lemon cookies. But not any lemon cookies. No. Today we are nicking a recipe from Gluten Free On A Shoestring and shall attempt to replicate their Gluten Free Lemon Meltaway Cookies without incurring the wrath from, or being slapped with a lawsuit by, the original recipe developer.

You need:

For the cookies:

210g or 1½ cups all purpose gluten free flour
77g or ⅔ cup icing (confectioner's) sugar
48g or ⅓ cup cornstarch
¾ tsp xanthan gum
½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
finely grated zest of 1 lemon
168g or 12 tbs unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 egg white, at room temperature
2 tsps freshly-squeezed lemon juice (plus more as necessary)
granulated sugar for dipping

For the glaze:

115g or 1 cup icing (confectioner's) sugar
2 to 4 tsps freshly-squeezed lemon juice

Shockingly, I followed the first suggestion to pre-heat my oven to 175c (or 350f), because looking down the instructions, I saw no mention of a particular bugbear of mine: being instructed to pre-heat the oven only to leave it on, pre-heating, for three hours, or overnight, while the dough rises, the shortbread log sets, or the melted butter cookies cool down in the fridge so they have a fighting chance of keeping a cookie shape whilst baking. Seriously, whose oven takes more than five minutes to warm up nowadays?

Anyhoo, this soap box seems to be developing a groove through over-use...

Find yourself a large bowl and add the flour, icing sugar, cornstarch, xantham gum, baking powder and salt, and, as suggested by the recipe, whisk to combine well. I'm guessing the whisk adds a certain je ne sais quoi to the combination process, the subtleties of which I am woefully under-qualified to comprehend. Leaving sarcasm aside, you're then instructed to add the lemon zest and to give it a jolly good mix to make sure any clumps of lemony goodness have been broken up. I took a photo of this stage, expecting to see a bowl of white (pink, green, and purple) flour decorated with little specs of yellow, but of course the zest, in the jolly good mixing, just gets coated with flour and loses its colour-defining properties.

Yes, the little shreds of zesty goodness are in there, because yes, the lemon has actually been relieved of its zest although looks appear to be deceiving, and yes, I used a wooden spoon and not a whisk. If my cookies lack a little I don't know what, then I'll know who what to blame.

After making a well in the centre of the mix, you're invited to add the butter, egg white, and two teaspoons of lemon juice to the mix, but remembering that you need to mix to combine after each separate addition. I'm such a picky language... picker (yeah, obviously it's not a super-power) that I get a little bothered by being told to add a list of ingredients, and only after you've dumped the butter, egg-whites and lemon juice in the flour well you read that, by the way, they should be added individually. Yes, the author is presuming you read through the instructions before flying head-long into the complicated world of cookie-making, but sometimes a little heads-up before the list would be helpful, because I get the impression that if a whisk is preferred to a spoon for the mixing-up of the dry ingredients, then making sure all the other ingredients aren't dumped in together at the same time might probably be important, too. Just sayin'...

My thighs are getting a really good workout from all this stepping on and off soapboxes today.

After everything has been added, and mixed in the right order, the dough should appear thick and smooth. You'll probably need to give it a good knead to get it there, and you can add more lemon juice by the teaspoon if it's not holding together properly.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper onto which place balls of dough you've rolled into a round between the palms of your hand, making sure to leave enough space between the balls to you can press them flatter without turning your tray into one huge lemon cookie. (Not, I have to say, that that sounds like a horrendous consequence of too-close cookie spacing...)

I'm not going to go into the really clumsy instructions given about how to wet the tines of a fork, dip them in sugar, and press them into the dough to make a flattened cookie with a pretty, sugary pattern on top, and just show you a photo instead.

Place the cookie sheet in the oven and bake them until their edges are lightly golden brown and are firm to the touch. 12 minutes is suggested, but I kept them in for 14 as they were still a little pale. I left them to cool on the sheet, as instructed, then transferred them to a wire rack in preparation for icing.

Never underestimate the amount of icing sugar, or over-estimate the amount of lemon juice you will need. Never. Icing sugar looks so strong and powerful in powder form, but shrivels up into a tiny proportion of its former self when faced with its arch-enemy, liquid. Do not, repeat: do NOT scoff at the ratio of powder to liquid. Never presume that when the recipe says 2 to 4 teaspoons of lemon juice to 115 grams of icing sugar, that it's playing around, and really means, ach, just use the rest of the juice left in the lemon, because it would be such a waste to throw it out when there's at least another half-lemon's worth in there...

Don't do it. Don't fall for the icing sugar scam. Especially when what is called for is a thick (but pourable) paste, and not a thin transparent glaze. You will end up emptying an only-recently opened box of icing sugar, and your kitchen will be covered with a thin, sweet powder that gets everywhere because you're getting more irritated each time you have to add another metric sh*t-ton of powder to a mixture that's stubbornly staying closer in consistency to lemon juice than to anything even approaching a drizzle-worthy state.

I'm beginning to feel like I should be adding PSA to the beginning of all my Fake Food-Blogger™ posts...

But fret not, for in the end a workable consistency will eventually manifest itself and you'll be able to artfully drizzle delicate icing zig-zags over the cookies, just like you see them do on television. Don't worry if they end up looking like a toddler was having a tantrum and decided that flinging spoonfuls of icing around the kitchen was the make-a-mess mode du jour, because these gorgeous mouthfuls of lemony delight don't taste any the less scrumptious for having been decorated by a ham-fisted spoon-and-icing noob. Seriously. My amateur drizzling skills do not detract from the gorgeousness that are Lemon Meltaway Cookies! They're light, and yummy, and do indeed melt-away on the tongue!

I may be in the mood to take apart some dreadful instruction prose, but the author sure knows how to name a cookie!

Blondie Ambition

My sister sent me a link to a blondie recipe the other day, and I was intrigued enough about it to feel the need to put on my amateur food blogger's cap. (It's a bit like a chef's toque, but comes with a long feather plume splashed with toner ink, looks a bit rumpled as is befitting amateur status, and is, of course, completely imaginary. The Emperor's New Amateur Food Blogger's Cap.)

:: settles TENAFBC on head a là Sheldon and his thinking cap in TBBT ::

Why this blondie recipe, and not any of the other blondie recipes I've bookmarked to date? The main ingredient caught me: chickpeas. Or garbanzo beans for anyone of an Over-The-Pond persuasion. A staple of many main meals and savoury snacks, but not one I'd seen in anything sweet before. But what can I say, I had a can in my food cupboard and all the other necessary ingredients of the recipe just sitting there, so I thought I'd give it a go, knowing that even if it was a culinary disaster that I'd probably eat it anyway.

And I wonder why I haven't reached a size ten yet...

Flourless Chocolate Chip Chickpea Blondies with Sea-Salt from Ambition Kitchen.

You need: 

1 (425g or 15 oz.) can chickpeas, rinsed and drained (I used peas very close in consistency to chickies).

125g or 1/2 cup peanut butter, almond butter, or your favourite nut butter (I used peanut butter).

113g or 1/3 cup maple syrup, honey or agave nectar (I used honey).

2 tsps vanilla extract.

½ tsp salt.

¼ tsp baking powder.

¼ tsp baking soda.

60g or ⅓ cup semisweet chocolate chips + 2 tbs extra for topping.

sea salt for sprinkling on top.

This is a very quick batter to make up, so I recommend following the recipe and preheating your oven to 175C or 350F right from the get-go because there's not going to be much in the way of hanging around waiting for a too-warm cookie batter to cool, or shortbread logs to set, so finally (finally!) no being asked to waste electricity for a couple of hours keeping an oven at optimum toastiness while you go through a long and convoluted creative sequence involving multiple ingredients, using complicated ‘time-saving' appliances.

(Don't worry, if I ever get to a place in my life where I have access to a full-sized oven, I'm sure I won't be quite so blasé with pre-heating times, or the construction process, but at the moment I own a tiny table-top oven that heats up in the blink of an eye, and am loathed to waste money I don't have on keeping it suitably cosy for half an hour while I, for example, attempt to pummel chickpeas into sludgy submission!)

So, once you have stepped off your soap-box, you are asked to add all the ingredients except the chocolate chips to a food processor, or, in true El-Cheapo fashion, add them to a rather creaky but serviceable herb chopper/hand-processor, or whatever they're called, and buzz them for a few minutes until you get a smooth batter. (Although I have to say that a creaky but serviceable herb chopper whose only working speed is ‘low' is not the most perfect implement to completely mash up the chickpeas, so if you have a proper food processor I'd use that so you don't have to attack the batter with a wooden spoon after whizzing it to within an inch of its motor's life yet not getting the mix past the chunky stage.)

But after you've achieved Batter: Smooth(ish), fold in the 60 grams of chocolate chips, 

spread the mix evenly in a prepared pan (non-stick spray coating, or greaseproof paper, or whatever method you prefer...), sprinkle the remaining two tablespoons of chocolate chips over the top,

then bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until a cake tester comes out clean and the edges are a light brown.

Or... um... not quite burnt.

(I ended up covering the pan in tinfoil after 20 minutes and then putting it in for another ten, because although the edges were starting to bear the brunt of the little oven's heating bars, the cake tester wasn't coming out clean. In all, it stayed in the oven for thirty minutes, enough to bake the batter through, and fill my flat with the delicious smell of chocolate and peanut butter!)

You're advised to let it cool on a wire rack before cutting it up, but be careful as it's of quite a fragile consistency, and I lost a few edges on the way from the pan to the rack, (the blondie's loss is my gain, of course), and once it's completely cool and more stable, you can sprinkle it with sea-salt and slice it up.

Of course, doling out advice about texture and appearance is something I'm hardly qualified to do, considering my Extreme Amateur Food Blogger™ status, and the state of the photo directly above, but it's fair to say that this isn't your average blondie/brownie consistency, and I've seen the suggestion in a couple of similar recipes of adding an egg to the mixture to cake it up a little. That being said, it's rather delicious, if a little dense, and the only reason I know there are chickpeas in the make-up rather than flour is because I put them in myself. Taste-wise it's just a smooshy peanut-butter and chocolate chip extravaganza, with perhaps a little nod towards the original savouriness of the chickpeas by the addition of a sprinkling of sea-salt on top, but otherwise you can't tell they're there at all.

If you fancy something a little different it might be worth swapping the choc chips with caramel chips (if you can find them) for another yummy taste combination (my sister, the reason this post exists, is a sucker for anything of a salted-caramel persuasion), but whatever you choose to do, be warned: they are moreish, and you might just have to tell people that they're made with chickpeas just so you can keep some for yourself!

Making A Mocha-ry

I found the almost-perfect cookie recipe online the other day.

At first I thought Pinterest was being slightly irreverent, for after showing me it's own interpretation of my wants and needs (gluten-free recipes, pimp-your-own-home-library ideas, and shoes that cost the equivalent of one month's rent) it displayed unto me a recipe for chocolate and coffee cookies. Chocolate and coffee. A perfect combination for the mostly-reformed chocaholic who can't live without her coffee. Little sparkly lights at the edge of my vision may have also been involved. Then came the zinger: fully-glutened chocolate and coffee cookies. Such cruelty.

But then, I reasoned with myself, I wasn't making a fancy cake where simply substituting wheat flour with GF flour would result in probable disaster, I was going to make cookies. For myself. No-one else need know if disaster ensued. So I decided to use my M&S All-Purpose Gluten Free Flour instead of the wheat flour used in the original recipe, and hang the consequences.

I'm nothing if not a self-enabler under the guise of Food Blogger To The Stars Few. 

Now, I have to admit to making some other changes in the recipe, too, mostly down to replacing the ingredients I didn't have with the ones I did have. With a little sprinkling of laziness, but hey, if I was meant to be a master baker I'm sure the Fates would have pointed me in the right direction well before now. And I'm pretty sure they like a laugh as much as the next person.

So my faithful few, if you've got this far then today we're attempting Espresso Chocolate Chip Cookies from Just A Taste. In the (un)Official Nic Revolutionary Edit of 2015™. Someone so needs to hire me as their spin doctor. I'd be awesome. I'd make everything sound a little cheesy, but I'd be awesome.

For approximately twenty five cookies you need:

3 ounces or 85g of unsweetened chocolate, chopped

2 cups or 350g of semisweet chocolate chips, divided

8 tbs or 115g of unsalted butter, diced

3 large eggs

1 cup + 2 tbs or 250g of sugar

2 tsp instant coffee granules

¾ cup or 105g all-purpose flour (gluten free)

⅓ tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

My replacements and substitutions ingredients-wise were thus: I used 100g of dark chocolate (a bars-worth over here in Clogland), mostly because I only had 180 grams of chocolate chips in the cupboard and needed any extra chocolate I could find. A terrible, horrible oversight that, running out of choc chips, and one of which I promise will never happen again. The shame. The humiliation. The... well, shock. Especially as I brought back a huge stash from home the last time I was there, what with them being on average around a quarter of the price of the equivalent over here, and I have no idea where they've gone. Well, no, that's a lie, they've gone to that Great Food Processor in the Sky. It's just obviously set on ‘Turbo Mix'. :: coughs ::

I used 170 grams of white sugar and added light brown sugar to bring it up to 250, purely because I forgot to write ‘white sugar' on my black-board shopping list last week when I realised I was running perilously low.

I also added another teaspoon of coffee granules to the amount advised in the recipe, mostly because I actually wanted to taste coffee in the cookies. I've found in the past that adding a little coffee to a chocolate recipe gives a boost to the overall chocolate taste without actually adding a coffee taste, which is great if you're wanting a Real Chocolate Experience, but because I'm looking for more of a nicely-mixed mocha, I added a little more coffee.

So really, if you want to make exactly what I made, you need:

3½ ounces or 100g 70% dark chocolate, chopped
1 cup or 175g semisweet chocolate chips
8tbs or 115g unsalted butter, diced
2 large eggs (yeah, I forgot to buy those, too)
17/20 cup or 170g white sugar (hey, it's about time the US measurements had to work for a change...)
2/5 cup or 80g light brown sugar (ditto)
3 tsp instant coffee granules

¾ cup or 105g all-purpose flour (gluten free)

⅓ tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

You're advised to pre-heat your oven to 350F or 175C, but I decided to wait. Not because I was worried that my poor old oven would be blasting away on stand-by for hours (as suggested by so many other recipes) but because the notes at the end of the recipe tell us that the batter will be much looser than the average cookie dough, no doubt because of the melted chocolate and butter, and I reckoned twenty minutes or so in the fridge before spooning them out to bake would lessen the chance of spread a bit. So I decided I'd put the oven on after placing the batter in the chilly depths of the refrigerator. 

You need to combine the chopped chocolate, the butter, and 1 cup of chocolate chips in a double boiler, and stir until they've melted. Or, if you're me, you'll combine the butter and chocolate (keeping the choc chips for a textural addition to the finished batter because you don't have enough to both melt and add for texture at the end) in a microwave bowl, and blitz it on high for thirty seconds at a time until it has melted.

Who would have thought such a sublime subject would be so difficult to capture by camera phone? Brown does not appear to be the most photogenic of colours when it comes to food.

Next it is suggested that you add a whisk attachment to your stand mixer and whisk the eggs, sugar and instant coffee granules on high speed until very thick, and the mixture forms a ribbon when the whisk is lifted, for about three minutes. Or ten minutes with a hand whisk and a lot of determination.

Then the fun part, although what's not fun about giving yourself neck-ache trying to simulate an electric whisk, (I feel like I'm turning into the Karl Pilkington of the fake food blogging world, and I'm not sure if that amuses or concerns me...) the fun part is slowly adding the melted chocolate to the egg and sugar mix, and whisking just until combined. The smell! THE SMELL, people. Oof. Now I'm really kicking myself for making these on a fast day. 

(It's not the first time I've conveniently misplaced the knowledge that I'm supposed to be on a food vacation day. My earliest attempt at making peanut butter banana bread fell on a fast day. No, actually, I'm well aware that it's a fast day, yet, incredibly, my brain likes to convince me that it's actually a clever idea to bake something that smells ridiculously tasty when I'm not actually allowed to eat it that day. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Brains are awesome but awful.

I'm talking about the 5:2 diet/lifestyle thing where I eat five hundred calories for two non-consecutive days per week. I've written about it already. I may write about it again at some point. It's not starvation, but it's five hundred calories to be consumed however you choose over one day, twice weekly. I usually choose some variety of home-made vegetable soup for lunch, and a massive pile of roast veggies for dinner. I don't feel full ever on these fast days (a potential oxymoron if I ever saw one), and although I'm not fit for company by the evening, I'm a great fan of the diet. The lifestyle. The whatever it is.)

So, after lamenting over the suspicion that your brain secretly hates you, you then need to turn off your stand mixer, or try to massage some life back into your dead arm, sift the flour, baking powder and salt into the bowl and stir until just combined, then add the remaining (or only) cup of chocolate chips.

It's at this point I put the bowl of batter in the fridge to harden a little (and put the oven on to pre-heat), because, as promised in the notes, the batter was a lot looser than your average cookie dough, and I figured putting them in the (pre-heated) oven as they were would only result in one massive tray-shaped cookie*, instead of more portion-friendly cookie batches. Although to be honest, it would have looked prettier than the... well, the effort below. 

After ten to twelve minutes in the oven (or until the cookies are cracked on top, and a little puffy-looking) you can take them out, and let them cool a little on the tray before transferring them to a rack. I was happy to see my effort exceeded all expectations in the looks department.

I then took artè-fartè photos of said not-so-ugly cookies; some not-quite-in-focus close-ups of broken cookies, then put them all BROKEN COOKIES INCLUDED in a box in the fridge. My will-power received a hearty slap on the back.

Cookies for breakfast tomorrow, though...

The Day After Edit: Oh my stars. These are good. REALLY good. Just squidgey enough in the middle whilst retaining their slightly crisp cookie edge, and a heavenly mix of coffee and chocolate. If you change nothing else in the original recipe, I (racing) heartily suggest adding an extra teaspoon of instant coffee granules. Because. Om. mmtastymm

* In the spirit of honesty, I must admit that this option did indeed cross my mind.

Faith, Hope And Cookies

When I read a claim that promises whatever is being touted is the best, cheapest, healthiest, tastiest, or most perfect thing ever, I tend to scoff and move on, suspecting that they're get-rich-quick efforts from online sharks; the evangelistic opinion of one; or anything in between the two. What can I say? I have trust issues. Still, for some reason, cookies inhabit another part of my brain. A trusting part. A part that promises me comfort and revels in the sensory delights of baking. I know, I know. I shouldn't trust this part of my brain any more than those internet snake-oil salesmen, because, hello? Until someone invents a zero-calorie treat, every wondrous cookie claim should be taken with a pinch of baking soda. 

All the same, going recipe-hunting and coming across one whose very name would normally have me scrolling on if it was anything other than a cookie recipe, was a hook I couldn't ignore!

The Healthiest Cookies Ever is that hook. I mean, yeah, sure, “healthiest cookies ever". (Please note the irony quotes.) But cookies... It's a real scroll on/click link quandary.

Please. Of course I clicked. And liked. And printed out.

The recipe says the quantity of mix is for twelve cookies, but I made mine more bite-sized and got twenty-six, uh wait... :: looks at final cookie photo :: um, twenty-four cookies :: wipes crumbs from mouth :: in total.

You need:

1½ cups or approx 190g raw walnut halves

1 cup or approx 175g dates, pitted (I used fourteen whole dates)

¼ tsp salt

½ tsp baking soda

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 egg (recommended flax egg if paleo or vegan)

½ cup or 190g dark chocolate chips (optional)

(I always snort when I see the word ‘optional' after ingredients such as chocolate chips. To me it's just as redundant as the ‘sharing' packs of Revels or M&Ms, or their added sticky closure so you can save more for later, as if the manufacturers truly believe you won't actually just scarf the whole bag down in one go. Bless.) 

It's quite a quick recipe this, doubly so for me this time, because I was going to use an electric implement. Oh yes! Well, actually, it's the last working pieces of an old hand-blender/electric whisk/mini processor that I bought a few years ago. I used the blender part to blitz my home-made soups, but because it was made of plastic, it didn't actually last very long. (Metal all the way, boys and girls, if you like your hand-blender to remain unwarped and working properly for more than six months...)

But I digress. Before I interrupted myself, I was explaining that this is actually quite a quick recipe, so I have no qualms in inviting you to preheat your ovens to 350f or 175c. (How many recipes have I done that say Turn On Your Oven, then tell you near the end that you need to set/proof/chill the dough for hours, forgetting that your oven has been on, toasty, and eagerly awaiting your raw cookies for an eternity already.)

So. Ovens on? Then we'll begin.

Firstly (or secondly if you're including turning on the oven...) line your baking sheets with parchment, and set them aside. 

In your glorified herb chopper (or food processor should you own one) whizz the dates and walnuts together until they form a crumbly mixture.

Then add in the salt, baking soda, vanilla extract, and egg (flax or otherwise) and whizz again until the batter is smoothish, then add in the choc chips, then give it a final quick whizz to distribute them evenly.

Bring your lined baking sheets back from whence they were banished, and spoon on the batter, using your hands to flatten the cookie dough. Actually, I used another spoon kept damp to avoid sticking to each cookie as I pressed it down. Not that you can tell...

Bake for twelve minutes, or until the edges are slightly golden, then keep them on the sheets to cool for ten minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

According to the author, you can store these up to a week in the fridge, or for a month or more in the freezer. They're really rather deliciously squishy and moreish, so more power to you if you feel that you won't be able to get through the cookies before they go off, and need to freeze them instead.

Me? Mine are already boxed up and in the fridge, safe away from grabby hands (mine) and will no doubt be enjoyably snarfled long before they have time to even think about being anything less than scrumptious! (But in a conscientious way of course... emptying the container in one day would turn these Healthiest Cookies Ever into an oxymoron!)