Dutch Shortcakes

This recipe is quite simple and loved most by Adam and his dad. I used a cheap piping bag and when I was about to pipe the dough, it tore! So I had to pipe the dough using just the nozzle. Surprisingly, it did not stress me out but made me laugh instead :) So, if you wanna make this shortcakes, make sure you have a good and strong piping bag. Or you can just make a ball and flatten it :)

Ingredients
2 tablespoon custard powder (or cornflour)
180g plain flour
150g butter
80g caster sugar
1 egg yolk

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 180C. Sift the custard powder and flour together.
2. Cream the butter and sugar together and beat in the egg yolk. Mix in the flour well.
3. Put the mixture into a piping bag fitted with a large star nozzle and pipe three flat zig zag lines about 5x25 cm on a non stick baking sheet. (I made smaller lines maybe about 3x15cm each)
4. Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes until pale golden brown. While still warm, cut each piece into six and cool on a wire rack.

Peanut Butter Cookies

Another cookie recipe? I found cookies easier for a beginner like me. Cakes are more complicated and most importantly, neither Adam or his dad are a big fan of cakes. It feels good to see Adam's cookie jar full of homemade cookies and every time he had one, he will tell me "daaap". That one word is enough to motivate me to bake more cookies.

As I am still new with cookie baking, I am excited to try as much recipe as possible so I would know which one my lil' cookie monster loves most. Anyway, I baked this before my "Main Masak-Masak" session with the girls last weekend. Started making it at midnight and done by 1.30am as the dough required some chilling before I can bake them. So here is the recipe for your own lil' (or big) cookie monster at home.


Ingredients
6 tablespoons butter
6 tablespoons sugar
150g crunchy peanut butter
1 egg
3 tablespoons golden syrup
175g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder

Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 180c. Lightly grease two baking sheets.
2. Cream the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy. Add the peanut butter, egg and golden syrup and beat until well combined.
3. Sift the flour with the baking powder and work into the mixture to form a soft dough. On a lightly floured surface, knead the dough lightly, then shaped into thick log. Cover with plastic wrap and let chill for 30 minutes.
4. Cut the dough into slices 5mm thick and space well apart on the baking sheets. Press a criss-cross pattern into the dough with the tines of a fork.

5. Bake until golden, 10-12 minutes. Let cool on the baking sheets for 2-3 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. Store in an airtight container for up to five days.

Cookie Tip
1. Use smooth peanut butter if you prefer a creamier texture.
2. The recipe actually yields 24 pieces if you roll a very thick log. I guess mine was not as thick as I managed to get 40 pieces out of it. Just the right size for Adam and the rest of the kids :)

Giant M&M Bites

When I went to MPH the other day, I fell in love with this book. Cookies Galore by Jacqueline Bellefontaine.

What I like about this book is that it is divided into a few sections like Kid's Cookies, Holiday Cookies, Grandma's Favourite and so on. One of the recipe that attracted me most was the Giant M&M Bites from the Kid's Cookies section. The recipes are also very simple and do not require Not-available-in-Malaysia ingredients like some other cookies recipe books.

My cousin Jihana once told me how easy and yet tasty M&M cookies are. So that very night, I decided to bake my first batch of Giant M&M Bites and it was really easy! Managed to prepare the cookie dough quite fast and the baking time was not that long too. Here is the recipe if you wanna try it.

Ingredients

125g butter, softened

75g sugar

75g soft light brown sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

200g self-raising flour

100g peanut or chocolate  M&Ms or sugar coated chocolates

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 190c. Lightly grease the baking sheet. (I used non stick tray)

2. Cream the butter and sugars together until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg and vanilla. Sift the flour and beat into the mixture. Add the M&Ms and stir until well combined.

3. Drop rounded tablespoons of the dough on the baking sheets, spacing well apart as the cookies will almost double in size.

4. Bake until golden, 8-10 minutes. Cool on the baking sheets for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. These are best eaten the day they are made. (Ours lasts for a week and still tasted great)

Cookie Tip

1. Always stir flour prior to measuring - flour settles as it sits and if you don't stir it you may end up adding too much to your cookies.

2. The cookies were quite big for Adam and he always managed to ate only half of it. So, maybe I will drop only half a tablespoon of the dough instead.

3. I was not so careful when stirring the M&Ms so some of them were crushed in the process and some of the cookies had more M&M than the other. Some has only 1 M&Ms. I read from other recipes, instead of mixing the M&Ms in the dough, you can just place the M&Ms on the dough that you have dropped on the tray. This way, the M&Ms will not sink in the cookies. 

Good luck trying!

My First..

Baking Cookies! Yummy one plak tu.. hahaha! perasannye :)

Hubby was never a sweet tooth. But one day, while eating his favourite Famous Amos cookies, he said "If you bake this, I will eat." That gave me a new aspiration. So there I was, excited to bake something that finally hubby would eat.

I went all out googling for the recipe and finally found one with very good review and seems doable from Suzette  Cooks. So, after work yesterday, with a help from my cousin, we messed the kitchen and baked the cookies.

The first batch was crunchy on the outside and chewy in the inside. Reason being, my oven, a very old one that is, does not have 190c. It was either 180c or 200c. For the next batches, I increased the baking time to 11 min and 15 seconds and the cookies were perfectly crunchy throughout. Hubby loved the chewy ones better though.

As hubby loved his cookies to have more textures, I added some crushed walnuts to a small batch of the dough. With walnuts in it, I baked the cookies for about 10 min 30 seconds only as anything more than that will burn the nuts. I made half of the recipe and it came out to 150 pieces of delicious melt-in-your-mouth cookies :)

My little boy loved the cookies so much and kept coming to me with the cookie jar because he could not open it himself. When hubby wanted to take one of the cookie jar, he screamed angrily! So cute! I have to give him another jar of cookies then only he allows hubby to take one of the cookie jars.

Hubby said, as cookies they are great but maybe not 100% like Famous Amos. Well, if it is the same, Famous Amos must have been out of business long time ago. I guess I just have to keep on looking for Famous Amos cookie recipes and try them to find which one is the closest to the real one.

It gave me such a pleasant feeling to see how much hubby and lil Adam enjoy the cookies. To make it easier for you, I have copied the recipe from Suzette's cooking blog. Give it a try! I promise you won't regret :)

‘FAMOUS AMOS’ CHOCOLATE COOKIES RECIPE

Ingredients

1 bar butter (approx 250g)

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla essence

2 cups plain flour

2 1/2 cups oatmeal, blended to powder

1/2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. baking powder

340g chocolate chips

250g Chocolate bar, grated

100g nuts (your choice), chopped

Method

1. Preheat oven at 190C

2. Cream the butter and both sugars

3. Add eggs and vanilla, mix evenly

4. Fold in flour, oatmeal, salt, baking powder, and soda.

5. Add chocolate chips, grated chocolate bar and nuts. Mix well (I used my hands in a food grade plastic bag, as it is too thick for my mixer).

6. Roll into small balls (around 1 inch in diameter) and place two inches apart on a cookie sheet/tray.

7. Bake for 10 minutes at 190 C.

When the cookies are removed, they are soft. But when left cool, it will harden up and become slightly crisp outside (but chewy inside).