Recipe: Nutella filled cookies

As well as making raspberry & white chocolate cookies on the weekend, I also decided, on a whim, to try and experiment with nutella filled cookies.

I used my normal base cookie recipe, but with milk choc chunks instead of the white chocolate and raspberry (although I did experiment with one nutella filled raspberry-and-white-choc cookie, which was fine, but didn't work as well as the normal choc chunk cookies).

Method

We will be following the same instructions as described here, but before we start, we will line a baking tray, and using a teaspoon put small blobs of nutella on it, and put it in the freezer to harden - this is mostly to make it easier to handle when we try to get it into our cookie later:

Once you have the cookie dough cooled and ready to cook, rather than shaping it into a ball, flatten each piece slightly and then put a piece of the frozen nutella in the center, shaping the dough back into a ball around the nutella competely.

Cook as described and eat!

Recipe: My favourite cookies

This post has now been migrated to the new robbish food website, robbishfood.com - You can check out my Ultimate Choc Chop Cookie post & recipe over there!

As I have mentioned before, one of my favourite sweet combinations is raspberry and chocolate - whether it be milk, dark or white chocolate, it just seems to work so well for me, so unsurprisingly, if not controversially, my favourite cookies are white chocolate and raspberry.

I made them last week, as a sort of practice run for an upcoming birthday party for my youngest, but I am pretty tempted to just keep making them regularly. Although, I am the only one in the house who prefers them to normal chocolate chip cookies, but that probably works in my favour too, as it means more for me (or more likely they don't all get eaten whilst I am out at work).


They are pretty simple, and are actually my go to cookie recipe, but you can replace the raspberries and white choc with plain choc chunks or whatever your mood fancies.

Ingredients

• 170 grams unsalted butter
• 250 grams plain flour
• 1 egg
• 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 100 grams granulated sugar
• 160 grams light brown sugar
• 200 grams white choc chunks
• 10 grams 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 chunks and raspberries 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
   
   
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

Gluten-free Rosemary Millionaires shortbread

A few weeks ago I re-visited my rosemary millionaire shortbread to attempt to make a gluten free version (well, mostly - I used regular porridge oats in my version, which I think is not guaranteed to be 100% gluten free because of cross contamination or something, but gluten free porridge oats are available).

I also varied the way I made the rosemary-caramel, but it still wasn't very rosemary, so maybe I will up the rosemary next time.

Ingredients

Shortbread

• 150 grams porridge oats
• 75 grams cornmeal
• 170 grams butter
• 90 grams caster sugar

Caramel

• 150ml double cream
• 30 grams salted butter
• a single finger pinch of sea salt
• 100 grams light brown sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon dried rosemary

Chocolate 

• 250 gram cadburys chocolate

Method

1. Make the shortbread - Normally making the shortbread we have to cream the butter and sugar and then fold in the flour, but as we are gluten free we don't need to worry about being careful this time: just mix the oats, cornmeal, sugar and butter together.
   
   
2. Press the mixture into a tin and cook in a fan oven at about 160 degrees for about 20 minutes - keep an eye on it so it doesn't go to brown, but we really want to cook it fairly slowly for a while so it has a chance to dry out, this will give it more of a brittle crunch to the base (in a hopefully good way)
   
   
3. For the caramel, gently melt all ingredients except rosemary in a pan, once melted add the rosemary and stir through, heat for two to three minutes
   
   
4. Leave the caramel to stand for another 10 minutes or so, whilst the shortbread cools
   
   
5. Poor the caramel through a sieve to remove the rosemary pieces, pour caramel onto the cooled shortbread
   
   
6. Place the caramel topped shortbread in the fridge to cool for another 20 minutes
   
   
7. Melt the chocolate in the microwave on a low power settings (will take a couple of minutes), once it is smooth, pour on top of the caramel shortbread and put back in the fridge to set.

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

Mothers Day Cake 2016

Yep, that time of year again, and of course, children have to be involved when it comes to a Mothers day cake, right?

Just days before, I had seen on some social media a rather impressive looking easter cake, and thought to myself, me and the boys should do that!

@BakeBehaviour My Mini Egg Drip Cake! #goldenmixerbadge pic.twitter.com/EwYrJSN5RM

— Jane's Patisserie (@janespatisserie) February 28, 2016

We didn't exactly follow the recipe, so our version is more inspired by the one above, all though I did follow the directions for making the chocolate ganache on the top (just chop chocolate and pour hot cream over the top).

The sponge was my go to food-processor sponge recipe from Nigella Lawson (I take it from her "Domestic Goddess" book, but the recipe can be found online), which is both incredibly easy/kid-friendly and seems to be pretty consistent in producing great Victoria sponges (note my highlighting! the food processor is the way to go, so don't be put off that it won't be good as traditional techniques!)

The buttercream was also a basic buttercream - based on BBC's basic buttercream recipe, which is basically a 2:1 sugar:butter ratio with a few spoons of milk as needed for consistency.


We went for a slightly more easter-y theme, and had a small chick popping out of the chocolate egg in the center, rather than just more eggs..

I believe the phrase that people use is #NailedIt

Birthday cake

It was my wife's birthday recently, so I had to go on the hunt for a good cake recipe. It's fairly un-familiar ground for me, normally when looking for a recipe or technique there are one or two sites that I would be my de-facto go-to sites, but I don't really have that baseline for cake recipes.

My not-very-inspired googling lead to this site:  The best chocolate cake recipe ever and failing to find anything else that was convincing enough I used this.  One other plus of the recipe is that it is measured in cups - which is much more child friendly - with digital scales its far too easy to get precious about precise figures, but its much easier to let a 3 year old just fill up some cups and not worry than to get them to read the scales!

The cake was fine. Wife was happy that it tasted good and was very moist, but my conclusion is that I'm not really a fan of chocolate cake. I mean, of course I like brownies, and sticky fudgey goo that resembles a cake, but chocolate-y sponge-y type cakes just don't do it for me.

I just used the sponge recipe, and only made one tier and then used a chocolate icing recipe from Peggy Porschen - which for me was the highlight. Although, to be honest, I'm not sure that any recipe that is made up of cream, cream cheese, sugar, chocolate and butter could be anything but amazing.  The original was taken from her Boutique Baking - I amended the ingredients for convenience (enough to easily cover a cake)

Ingredients

• 225 grams sifted icing sugar
• 100 grams unsalted butter
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 70ml whipping cream
• 1/2 teaspoon caster sugar
• 80 grams choc chunks
• 180 grams cream cheese (this is more than needed, but I just jammed in the whole tub of phillidelphia)

Method

1.  Heat the cream on a medium heat, once it brings to simmer take it off the heat and pour it over the choc chunks and caster sugar in a bowl. Mix together until smoothe and glossy. Set aside to set at room temperature.
   
   
2. In another bowl, whisk the cream cheese until light and creamy
   
   
3. In a final bowl add the icing sugar, butter and salt - cream until light and fluffy
   
   
4. Once the choc mix has set, probably only 10 minutes or so - I didn't have to wait around whilst doing the other bits - add a third of it into the cream cheese and mix through
   
   
5. Next, add the remaining choc mix to the buttercream, mixing as you go. Once fully mixed jam in the choc-cheese mix and combine again.

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