Posts Tagged ‘sweet’
chocolate-dipped macadamia nut cookies
The Test Kitchen is swamped with cookies right now. Every few hours it feels like a new batch appears. Millionaire’s shortbread. Madelines. Pear bars. A new cookie book is in the works and you’d think it would make my desire for cookies wane, but oh no, the exact opposite has been happening. I just want cookies more now.
I whipped these together after reading the recipe in Everyday Food. I love macadamia nuts and the idea reminded me of one of my favorite guilty pleasures, the Sausalito cookie from Pepperidge Farms. Toasted macadamia nuts, bittersweet chocolate, and just the right texture of a moist inside with a delicately crisp bottom.
The chocolate is pretty thick so I didn’t dip so much as paint on the portion that is chocolate. I was tempted to break out the pastry bag and tips and do pretty designs but yeah, delusions of grandeur and laziness got the better of me. Lack of frills aside, these are still delicious and soul satisfying.
rhubarb fool
The last time I visited home my mom gave me this recipe torn out of a magazine (along with a pile of newspaper articles and miscellaneous bits of reading materials she thought I’d be interested in), so it seemed only fitting I would make it on Mother’s Day.
A fool is a British dessert traditional using layered whipped cream and egg whites with fruit puree, but this healthier pseudo-breakfast version is just as tasty. Instead of whipped cream you use thick Greek yogurt and the fruit is a quick rhubarb preserve with that perfect sweet-tart tang. This is one of those dishes that can’t decide if it’s dessert or breakfast and is deceivingly “healthy” (trust me, with all the sugar, it’s not), yet it’s still easy and delicious — two things everyone can love.
british flapjacks
My blog turned 2 a few weeks ago during which I was going through tissues like water and could barely stomach anything beyond tea and toast. I was sad to miss the opportunity to make something grand to celebrate it, but when I sat down to decide what to cook to commemorate the occasion, I realized something grand wasn’t the style at all. My blog should reflect what’s going on in my life. That’s the point of it (for me, at least). I cook food that makes me reminisce, that reflects the seasons or holidays around me, that reflects my mood and current life situation. I ate my feelings via baked goods living in Boulder. I started thinking about calories and eating healthier when I was working out hardcore. Now I work 2 jobs, pinch pennies like I never have before (thanks student loans!), have almost no time or energy to cook at home, yet am far happier now than I was a little over a year ago.
So in a way, this recipe perfectly reflects how I’m feeling, my life, and things going on around me. The Royal wedding. No time or energy to cook. Strapped for cash. Reminiscing about other times in my life and thinking about what I’ve learned this year.
British flapjacks are sort of their version of our Rice Krispie treats. You melt some sweet ingredients on the stove and stir them into dry cereal (and in this case, you bake them). The thing that really caught my eye about them was the use of Lyle’s Golden Syrup, an ingredient I had never heard of before starting my job in the test kitchen I still currently work in (and the job I was awarded right around the 1st anniversary of my blog). It took me ages to find it in the grocery store and it’s still something I don’t see very often (in stores or recipes). I tried it and learned something new – an ongoing theme in my life I still cherish at my job. It’s an almost sickly sweet sugar syrup that needs tempering with salt and other ingredients, but it’s a marvelously underused ingredient with tons of flavor and depth.
The bars are delicious. Like super sweet granola bars with a nutty, almost caramel undertone. I wish I had had some dark chocolate to drizzle on top but alas, they’re still delicious plain.
Also, it pains me to say it but as I indicated above, since time and money is short right now, my posts may be sporadic until life evens out.
oatmeal raisin scones
Scones are tricky things. They’re one of those rare baked goods that should be dry, but not too dry. The texture should politely request to be dipped in tea, but not cry out for it.
I had to keep telling myself these things as I made these. I had a craving for oatmeal raisin cookies but wanted to try something new so I went with scones instead. King Arthur’s recipe is a great foundation to start from and I edited from there, and made myself resist adding more milk, more butter, etc. The first time around the texture was, ahem, less than ideal (and the taste of baking powder was unbelievably overwhelming), so this batch had a little more butter, little less baking powder, and brown sugar.
They’re super hearty and dense, but in that good scone way. Be sure to use sprinkling sugar (or some kind of sugar) on top – the texture really completes them. Served with a cup of good tea, they’re perfect.
cowboy cookies
Sometimes you just have to bake cookies at 11pm on a Saturday night. And sometimes they just have to be chocolate-oat-pretzel cookies.
I got the Baked Explorations book for Christmas and this is the first thing I made out of it. I love the writing style of the Baked duo and their absolutely meticulous borderline OCD/Rose Levy Beranbaum way of explaining how to bake something as simple as cookies. Use cool (but not cold) butter, use a scoop this exact size, press down on the cookies but don’t smush them, etc. As much as I love to cook on the fly, sometimes it’s more relaxing to just follow instructions to the T. And this T stands for Totally awesome cookies.
Everyone knows I’m a sucker for salty sweets and so the pretzels are of course a fabulous element I love in these. Still, I wish they were even more salty. So in the ingredients listed below I’ve added a bit more salt and say you should use bittersweet chocolate. I think the cookies would just really benefit from it. They would go from totally awesome to super totally awesome. If there is such a thing.
