Cookie tray bake

Hard to believe that its been almost two years since my last update here, despite having been busy cooking, I don't seem to have found the time. Now we are well and truly on lock-down here in the UK, I am finding a bit more time (not a whole lot more, I should add, given as we have two kids in the house that need entertaining, most of my additional time locked in is quite quickly filled).

One recipe that I have bene playing with is a cookie tray-bake. It's simple, quick and good to do with kids. I was originally playing with the idea of more extravagant versions of this (mini eggs etc in them), but given shop trips are limited, I have kept it simple.

Another good thing about the tray bake approach is you can cut the slices as big or as small as you like, so can easily get child friendly slice sizes (I never manage to make small cookies!).

Ingredients

• 170 grams unsalted butter
• 100 grams granulated sugar
• 160 grams light brown sugar
• 300 grams flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate soda
• 200 grams choc chips
• 1 egg

(Substitutions: as always, feel free to play fast and loose on substitutions - I have recently had an abundance of self-raising flour, so have made the last two batches with that instead of plain flour, with no ill effect. Likewise, I have switched the light brown sugar for dark brown or muscavado - you get a different taste with those, more caramel-treacle-y, which is also nice!)

Method

1. Cream the butter and sugar - stick it in a free standing mixer and beat - it should visibly look a lighter colour, and will probably take a couple minutes (for real, leave it mixing for a couple minutes, which will probably feel like a long time)
   
   
2. To ensure an even distribution, I often add the baking powder and bicarb at this point and beat further
   
   
3. Add the egg and beat until its smooth and combined
   
   
4. Add the flour and mix slowly until combined, add the chocolate chips and mix further for 30 seconds or so until distributed throughout
   
   
5. Line a tin with baking paper and press the dough into the tin, and put in the fridge to chill. Overnight if you have time, but a couple hours is fine (to be honest, feel free to cook immediately if you want, it won't be the end of the world)
   
   
6. When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 160 Fan (180 or whatever you adjust your non-fan oven to) and bake for 23-25 minutes, turning 2/3 times throughout.
   
   
7. Take out and leave to cool on a rack (still with the baking paper is the easiest), after 5 mins transfer (still in baking paper) to a chopping board and cut into slices as your prefer. Serve immediately with ice cream.

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

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

Recipe: Chicken nuggets & beans

Having moved on from perfecting my grilled cheese, I have a new food obsession: Southern fried chicken.  To be honest, it is something I have thought about for a while, but have always skipped making it on account of not having a deep fat fryer (and generally not wanting to deep fry things).  However, last weekend, I was planning on making some baked beans with my older boy and suddenly thought maybe we should also make some chicken nuggets. I then thought, why not make chicken nuggets but trying to get a similar taste/texture to southern fried chicken?

Now, there are two elements to the experiment:

1. Making up a recipe for the batter/seasoning
   
   
2. Finding the best non-deep frying alternatives

Plus, there's the baked beans.

KFC style chicken nuggets

I guess I should clarify that the title is probably more aspirational (kind of anyway, really we are aiming for much better than KFC, plus healthier) - also, as mentioned above, we were free-styling with this one and will be a work in progress)

Ingredients

• 400 grams chopped chicken breast
• 300ml buttermilk
• 3 tablespoons cornmeal/polenta (can be swapped for flour)
• 1 teaspoon mixed italian herbs (can be swapped for just one tablespoon of dried oregano, basil & thyme)
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon smoked sweet paprika
• 1/4 teaspoon chilli powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• vegetable oil for frying (if you are frying)

Method

1. Leave the chicken to rest in a bowl with the buttermilk - I put mine in the buttermilk first thing in the morning before cooking in the evening, but if you don't have time then just stick them in the buttermilk whilst you prepare the rest of the ingredients
   
   
2. Mix the dry ingredients together in another bowl, add a tablespoon of the buttermilk to the dry mix and stir through - this is to achieve that nobbly type texture that you often get on KFC (see the picture above of the coated chicken), and I got this tip from Kenji at the FoodLab (although also apparently a known technique) - the alternative technique suggested to achieve this effect is to double-dip the chicken (buttermilk, roll in batter, dip in buttermilk then back in the batter).
   
   
3. Cook the chicken - I tried both shallow frying and oven baking:
   
   Shallow fry - This was the first approach I tried, the problem was I was too conservative with the oil, and the chicken was sticking to the pan a bit, which resulted in a lot of the batter falling off every time I had to scrape it up to turn over.  I think the recommended amount is about one inch of oil.  The chicken tasted good, and the batter had a good oil-y texture, but  still seemed too fried for me.
   
   Oven bake - The second half of the batch went on a very lightly oiled baking tray in the oven, at about 180degrees (fan oven), cook until the chicken is cooked (I think it was probably about 20 minutes for me).  The batter remained intact, and the seasoned batter tasted good, but it wasn't the texture (or appearance) of fried chicken.
   

It largely tasted pretty good, and went down well, but in my opinion it needs a few tweaks:

• It tasted too oregano-y - I will keep some Italian herbs in the mix, but probably reduce it
• There wasn't enough black pepper.  Pepper is a big part of normal KFC type seasoning, and whilst I didn't want to replicate it completely, it needed more

My next experiment will be an updated batter, used with chicken legs but cooked on the BBQ - The BBQ seems to be pretty good at keeping chicken legs juicy, which I am hoping will provide more moisture to the batter without needing a tonne of oil.

Baked beans 

In our house, we actually call these "tomato beans" - because if you are familiar with "Reasons my kid is crying", we feared that if we called them baked beans, and then the boys ate them, they may take a grievance with the fact that they aren't actually the baked beans they might expect.

And honestly, there isn't really any recipe/reason to this one. Its just tomatoes and beans, then anything we decide to throw in.  But here is more or less what we put in the last batch (which went down well, including with my wife - which made me think they would actually go down well as a side at our next BBQ):

Ingredients

• 400 gram tin of tomatoes (preferably whole, but doesn't matter)
• 400 gram tin haricot beans
• punch of sugar
• smoked sweet paprika
• dash of balsamic vinegar
• tomato purée
• squirt tomato ketchup (optional - this is just for fun)
• any other spices/herbs you want

Method

1. First step is what we call "messy hands" - jam the tomatoes into a bowl and squash them all up (this is why we use whole tomatoes - its more fun for the boy to squash them)
   
   
2. Add the rest of the ingredients - this is a fun one to cook just because its all done by taste really, and the boy gets to taste the ingredients as we add them in and taste the work in progress as we go
   
   
3. Purée the tomato sauce in a blender/food processor
   
   
4. Add the tomato and beans to a pan, simmer on the hob until heated through

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: St David's Day Welsh cakes

As it is St David's day today, and as the Welsh rugby team were playing yesterday (they won!) I decided making Welsh cakes would be a fitting activity for me an elder son to do.

I had never actually made Welsh Cakes before, so I googled, and the top result was this BBC article so decided to go with that, with some alterations, as always, based on what we had in the cupboards/could be bothered to buy.

It's a good recipe to do with children, as its really just measure out the dry ingredients, then rub in the butter, then roll and cut out - all of which can be done with pretty much any age children (elder son is 3 1/2 and he helped with all steps).

Ingredients

• 225 grams plain flour
• 85 grams caster sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg (this and the cinnamon was in absence of all spice, where as we had these, so i just jammed these in)
• 110 grams unsalted butter
• 40 grams raisins
• 40 grams choc chunks
• 1 large egg

Method

Lightly grease a heavy base pan

1. Chop the butter up into small-ish cubes
   
   
2. Weigh out dry ingredients and rub in butter
   
   
3. Add raisins and choc chunks
   
   
4. Add the egg and combine until you have a smooth dough
   
   
5. Flour a surface and roll out the dough so about 1 cm thick
   
   
6. Cut the welsh cakes to whatever shape you want (as you can see, we had hearts, stars, circles and gingerbread-men shapes)
   
   
7. Cook them in batches on the pan, roughly 3-5 minutes each side (until lightly browned)
   
   
8. Take them off the heat, sprinkle with caster sugar and eat whilst still warm
   
   
9. Watch Wales win in the Rugby

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