Oat-y shortbread bites

It's been a strange kind of weekend for cooking. For a change, my savoury food has all turned out fairly badly (a made an adhoc couscous sund-dried tomato and mozarella bake, yesterday which I quite enjoyed but didn't quite taste right, and then today I attempted to make an afghan inspired stew but: I mis-judged the spices and it ended up tasting like curried aubergine, my okras got mistakenly thrown away and I hadn't soaked my split peas), but as a pleasant change, my shortbread experiment turned out pretty well.

I have been trying to perfect my brown butter shortbread recipe I have previously posted. As mentioned, I am happy with the taste, but they are incredibly crumbly (to the point of being pretty messy to just pick up), but my repeated attempts to adjust the ratios have been met with continued failure. I am sure that the problem is due to lack of water in the mix, but not able to get the balance right.

Anyway, this weekend, on the Saturday, I was out with the boys and we had some oat-y type shortbread biscuits with dried strawberry in a cafe, which were pretty tasty. So needless to say, when we got up this morning, I decided we should try to work out the recipe.

The first iteration was pretty decent - a little sweeter than I had in mind (I prefer more butter-y flavour in my shortbread) so I think next time I will try with more butter, and more flour to keep the structural integrity) but overall pretty decent.

I also substituted raisins for the strawberries on this occasion, on account of us having millions of raisins and no dried strawberries in the house. Anyway, to the details..

Ingredients

• 90 grams rolled oats
• 125 grams plain flour
• 100 grams caster
• 15 grams light brown sugar
• 180 grams unsalted butter
• raisins
• Pinch salt

Method

1. In a freestand mixer with paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugars until light
   
   
2. add the salt, raisins and oats and mix until combined
   
   
3. Add the flour and gently mix through - either on the lowest speed of the mixer or by hand
   
   
4. wrap in cling film and roll into a tube shaped about 1 inch in diameter (I was going for small, slightly bigger than bitesize biscuits) and cool in the fridge for 30 minutes until set
   
   
5. Pre-heat the oven to 160 degrees centigrade, slice the chilled batter into discs about 1/2 inch deep and place on baking tray line with baking paper, cook for about 15-20minutes untill golden brown

Shortbread Swirls for children

The original recipe for this one came from a Green and Blacks chocolate recipe book.  As it is basically just shortbread, I just use my normal ratio that I use for brownbutter shortbread.

This is a really simple one, but more visually satisfying, which is good for doing with children (which is really the only time I make these).

Ingredients

• 210 grams plain flour
• 100 grams caster sugar
• 10 grams cocoa powder
• 150 grams choc chunks
• 180 grams unsalted butter

Method

Pre-heat fan oven to 160 degrees centigrade

1. In two separate batches, cream together 50 grams of sugar and 90 grams of butter
   
   
2. In one batch mix in 110 grams of plain flour and beat further until combined
   
   
3. In the other batch of sugar/butter mix the remaining 100 grams of plain flour and the 10 grams of cocoa powder
   
   
4. Roll out the plain dough in to a rectangle, so its approximately 1/2 cm thick
   
   
5. Roll out the cocoa dough to roughly the same size (these are very much rustic looking, so don't worry if they are wonk or not very rectangle - just rough rolling is fine)
   
   
6. Lay the cocoa dough on top of the plain one, now spread the choc chunks across the top of the dough
   
   
7. Carefully holding the dough, roll it up so it makes a cylindrical shape (like rolling up a rug!) - again, don't worry if bits of the dough break due to the choc chunks, just squeeze/pat it together
   
   
8. Once rolled, cover it in clingfilm and pop in the fridge to cool a little, 30-60 minutes is probably fine
   
   
9. Once chilled, remove the roll and slice into discs, about 1/2-1 inch thick, place on a lined baking tray and pop in the oven for about 15minutes, or until the plan dough starts to lightly brown

Mastering shortbread (brown butter shortbread recipe)

I have always been a fan of eating shortbread. Well, good shortbread anyway.  Honestly, I can't remember what started me off on this latest quest - I think it was maybe just browsing some recipe books and it put me in the mood to give it a shot.

I don't normally cook that many sweet things, possibly cookies and brownies aside, and have never attempted shortbread before, but a month or two back I suddenly decided on a whim to give it a go.

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I started off using the recipe in Ruhlman's Twenty , which is as follows:

• 225 grams plain flour
• 170 grams butter
• 100 grams caster sugar

(and to be honest, whilst there has been some variation in quantities throughout the experiments, this is pretty much spot on as to my final ratio of the parts)

He advised that the most important thing about making good shortbread was the quality of the ingredients, which makes sense being as its such a simple combination of three ingredients.  What followed was me spending several hours reading about butter. And I am speaking literally. I spent at least three hours reading about butter online.

Michael Ruhlman recommended using cultured butter if you can get it, so I went about trying different butters - the first two I tried were cultured, but honestly I didn't see that much of a noticeable difference in real terms - I then tried a few high-end British salted butters (cultured butter is more of a French/European thing, most English butter isn't cultured).


After a while of variations - all of which predominantly turned out very tasty - I still wasn't super impressed with the quality.

One day, for no particular reason that I can remember, I thought to myself, why not try browning the butter first and using that for my shortbread. This turned out to work well.  Maybe it wouldn't impress shortbread purists, but it works for me. So here it is..

Ingredients

• 1/3 teaspoon fine salt (I started using 1/2 teaspoon in my firstbatch, but it was ever so slightly too salty for my taste, although still very edible - so adjust this to taste) 
• 200 grams plain flour
• 20 grams cornmeal (if you want, just replace this with more plain flour)
• 100 grams white caster sugar
• 170 grams brown butter (butter will reduce in the browning process, so you probably need to start off with something like 220 grams butter to be sure)

Method

1. Brown your butter - this is a simple process, chop it up and chuck it into a pan (ideally a stainless steel or something where you can clearly see the colour of the butter throughout the process) and melt it over a gentle heat - once melted, it will start to turn a golden brown and will start to smell awesome (more so) and kind of nutty, as it starts to brown, keep stirring it to make sure the sediments don't burn 
2. Transfer your molten brown butter to a bowl to cool and set (I transfer it to a bowl on top of a digital scales, so I can get the required 170 grams I need later.
3. Once set, cream the butter and sugar together in a mixer, ideally with a paddle attachment if you have it (this is just for ease really)
4. Once creamed together and looking light, add in the flour, cornflour and salt - mix until combined
5. At this point we are freestyling, if you have a pan or something you want to put it in, then chuck it in, and slam it in the oven at about 160 (fan oven) for about 20minutes, or until lightly browned - What I do at this point is normally roll into a tube shape, wrap in cling film and put in the fridge to cool. Once cooled, it's easily sliced into disks that can be lay on a baking tray for consistent size/appearance biscuits.

Recipe: Raspberry & white choc cookies

There are two reasons I decided to work on a cookie recipe:

1. I am building up to making breakfast cookies (read: cookies with bacon in) and wanted to nail a good oatmeal cookie recipe (feels like a breakfast cookie should be more oatmeal-y no?), and didn't have any bacon.
   
   
2. As mentioned, my parents were up this week, and seemed like a good early morning activity with my older boy before they arrived.

Raspberry is one of my favourite chocolate-complimenting-fruit - works well with big white choc chunks in cookies/cakes/muffins and also works amazing well with dark, dark chocolate.

This recipe is another example of being based massively on availability - there are basics when it comes to cookies - sugars, butter, flour (baking powder), but variations around these that make varying levels of difference to the end result.  The result is a classic american-style cookie, with a brittle crunch to the edge and a soft chewy centre (even better when warm)

Ingredients

• 170g unsalted butter
• 125g self-raising flour (this was because I didn't have any plain flour - normally I would use plain flour + baking powder, but being as that is basically what self-raising flour is, meh)
• 125g rolled oats (porridge oats) - flour is more tightly packed than oats, so if converting to cups then make sure you take that into account
• 1 egg
• 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (also called baking soda)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 100g granulated sugar
• 160g light brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract(optional - I often forget this one)
• 200g white choc chunks
• 7g freeze dried raspberries

Method

Preheat oven to 160 degrees. Makes about 15-25 cookies, depending on the size you go for

1. Mix the flour, oats, salt and bicarbonate of soda together in a bowl
   
   
2. Add the sugars and butter in a bowl (ideally of a freestanding mixer, but whatever) and mix well - for a few minutes with the paddle attachment if you have one, but again, whatever. Just mix it well so it is smooth and well beaten
   
   
3. Add the egg and beat/mix again for a minute or so until well combined. Add the vanilla if using it.
   
   
4. Add the flour mixture and beat until combined and formed a cohesive dough. If you are using a free standing mixer, then increase the power slowly, as if you go straight in fast then you will get covered in flour. This has happened more than once to me.
   
   
5. Chuck in the choc/raspberries (or whatever other choc/filling you are using) and mix for another 30sec-1min
   
   
   
   
6. Wrap the the dough in clingfilm and stick it in the fridge to cool - probably an hour or so (see after thoughts on this point)
   
   
   
   
   
7. Once cooled, chunk the dough into small fist size balls and place them equally spaced on a baking tray and cook for about 15minutes, or until  they have melted into cookie shapes and lightly browned.
   
   
   
   
   
   
8. Take them from the oven, let them cool for a bit- they will sink down and start to look like the familiar, classic cookie look - kind of cracked across the top
   
   
   

After thoughts

•  I didn't nail the oat-cookie ratio. I will try upping the oatmeal ratio next time. It wasn't bad, and you got the oatmeal bite a little, just not like you would on a proper oatmeal cookie. Will up it to 75% oatmeal to 25% flour ratio next time
  
  
• I didn't have either of the sugars listed above - so I substituted caster sugar for granulated and demerara for the light brown sugar. Caster sugar is still granulated, but generally a lot finer, so from a scientific point of view this makes a difference to absorption rates/speed but on this scale, it doesn't make much difference. Same for the brown sugar swap - they are different sugars, and clearly a very different make up (dip your finger in each type and taste it - the granule size, taste etc) - but again, didn't seem to make much difference here
  
  
• My freeze dried raspberries just don't seem to be up to the job. I will try with an alternative on the raspberries.
  
  
• If you make the cookie-dough balls smaller, about the size of a table-tennis ball or smaller, you will get a crunchier, biscuit crunch right the way through the cookie. If you go for balls about the size of a golf ball and bigger you get the classic crunchy-around-the-outside-chewy-and-soft-in-the-center cookie (which I prefer!)
  
  
• The length of the time you keep the dough in the fridge for also effects cookie texture - if you split the dough in half and cook one half after a few hours in the fridge and leave the other half for a day or more, you will notice a difference - the latter being tougher and more crunch throughout