Chewy American style cookies

I’m a huge lover of cookies, but I’ve struggled to get that soft chewy American style cookie…well until now!

I'm now in love with this recipe, it has worked every time and is so easy.

I’ve gone a bit cookie crazy now and been experimenting with loads of different flavours. Below is the choc chip recipe further down are a few of the flavours I’ve experimented with.

Ingredients 

Makes 15

120g salted butter, at room temperature
75g light brown sugar
75g granulated sugar (use caster sugar)
½ tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
240g plain flour
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
200g choc chips

1. Beat together the butter and sugars until fluffy – I use my lovely new Kenwood Kmix for this which was a bday present and I’m in love with it! Add the vanilla extract, then the egg, and beat in well (I add a spoonful of flour here as well to stop curdling).

2. Add the flour and bicarbonate of soda, then mix until combined to a dough. The mixture will be pretty solid making it hard to mix – that’s why using a stand mixer really helps – unless you want a great bingo wing workout!

3. Then add you choc chips (or other choice).

4. Preheat the oven to 180C. Line two baking trays with greaseproof paper. Shape mix into golf-ball sized balls and place on baking tray, spacing them well apart. Bake for about 13-15 minutes, until golden, but not browned.

5. ENJOY!

So my experiments -

 

I replaced the choc chips with a variety of different flavours.

 

 

White choc and toffee popcorn = 130g white choc, chopped up plus 70g toffee popcorn

 

 

Choc orange = 150g good quality dark orange chocolate chopped up (I used Sainsbury’s Swiss Fair-trade) and 30-50g of sugared orange segments again chopped up.

 

 

M&Ms – 200g of M&Ms!

 

 

For Easter I’ll be trying white choc and raspberry! Have you got any other cookie flavour ideas?

Egg free chocolate chip cookies

I've been recovering from an op  recently so haven't been able to bake or craft as much as I'd like to. It has been driving me bonkers!

 

Luckily I'm on the mend now and I fancied doing a spot of baking today.

 

Unfortunately, being refined to the house for a few weeks has meant a lack of ingredients! Even eggs!

 

Luckily I had a few basics so thought I try an eggless cookie recipe and they worked out great! The texture is quite chewy but I'm a big fan of that! They don't brown as much as normal cookies either, but I doubt they'll hang around long enough for anyone to care!

 

Ingredients

 

2 & 1/4 cups - Plain flour

1/2 cup - softened butter

3/4 cup - Caster sugar

1 tsp - Vanilla essence or flavour

1/2 cup Oil (I used sunflower)

1 tsp Baking powder

3 tsp Water

1/2 to 1 cup of Chocolate chips (although I used peantut butter chips for mine, mmmm)!

 

Basically cream the sugar and butter together, then add everything else!

 

Bake for about 12 - 15 minutes at 190 deg and enjoy!

 

 

 

 

Fat free apple and cinnamon muffins

So I still seem to be in Christmas and Birthday eating mode not realising it’s actually 3 months since Christmas and a month since my birthday!

With this at the back of my mind though I really wanted to bake today but decided to try and find a super healthy recipe.

I found an American fat free apple muffin recipe (hence the “cup” measurement). I’ve adapted the recipe a bit to make it a bit different and added a few extra ingredients.

They have no butter in them and I’ve worked out they are about 130ish calories each. So not too bad as they turn out quite big!

Ingredients:

·         ¾ cup self-raising flour
·         1tsp. baking powder
·         ¾ tsp. cinnamon
·         ¼ tsp. nutmeg
·         ¼ tsp. ground ginger
·         3 eggs
·         1 cup light muscovado sugar
·         1 tsp. vanilla essence
·         2 apples, peeled and cubed (quite small cubes)
·         2 handfuls of sultanas

Step 1

Preheat your oven to around 180 degrees.

Step 2

Mix all the dry ingredients together (apart from the sugar).

Step 3

Add two whisked eggs and the vanilla to the dry ingredients (it won’t all mix together at this stage). Then whisk the third egg separately until fairly frothy.

Step 4

Add the muscovado sugar to the separate whisked egg. It will turn into quite a smooth, silky caramel like liquid as you can see.

Step 5

Add the sugar and egg mixture to the other ingredients and stir together. Then add the chopped apple and sultanas and spoon into muffin cases.

Cook for about 20mins or until a cocktail stick comes out clean.

Then I did decide to put a little icing on top to make it a bit cinnamon bun stylee!

They certainly taste different to regular muffins but they do taste yummy! They are a bit denser than regular muffins and I don’t think they’ll keep as long as ones with butter…but in this house cake never lasts that long any way!

Felt cupcake decoration

I made this for my friend over at BeautyU’s birthday the other week. She’s a big fan of baking and pretty things so thought this would be perfect!

You’ll need

·         Felt

·         Stuffing
·         Needle and thread
·         Scissors
·         Beads and trimming

Step 1

Draw a cupcake shape onto a piece of paper to use as a template.

Use 2 bits of paper and fold in half and cut out the template. This gives you four pieces the same size (although I only needed 3 in the end)!

Step 2

Take each paper cupcake template and cut into the “layers”.

So I’ve got…

1 – front and back

2 – bun case and cake
3 – icing and cherry!

Step 3

Use the templates to cut the correct size out of felt. (apologies for my hand shadows...stupid spotlights)!

Step 4

Check all your pieces fit together

Step 5

Using a simple running stitch sew all the pieces together, using the stitch to add the detail.

Step 6

Add extra detail. So I added some of my bargain trimming and beads to look like sprinkles!

Step 7

Use a blanket stitch to sew the front and back together, then add the stuffing and sew up and knot! I also added the hanger at this stage so the loose ends were sewn neatly inside.

Step 8

Hang up and admire!!

Baking with Trex part 2 - Strawberry Fondant Fancies

Following on from my chocolate orange cupcakes I also made Strawberry Fondant Fancies using my new favourite ingredient - Trex.

Well, they were meant to be fancy but I lovingly renamed them messies! Not so much because of the way they turned out, more because of the mess I managed to make in the kitchen whilst icing!

I used the same recipe I used in part one but I added pink colouring to the sponge mixture. I didn’t flavour the mixture as I added the strawberry flavouring in a different way as you’ll see later!

I used a square cake tin as this would make it it easier to get the classic square fondant fancy shape.

I think I should have used a little more colouring as there was a slight “regular sponge” colour coming through too, which mixed with the pink seemed to look a little green!

I cut the cake into 18 smaller squares.

Then I used my Wilton nozel icing kit to fill the centres of each square with a generous squirt of strawberry jam. This is where the mess started!

I also covered the top and sides with strawberry jam to allow the icing to stick.

Then I used fondant icing sugar  (I used Tate and Lyle) to cover the cakes. Just drizzle the icing over (again, more mess)! I then finished with white fondant icing drizzled in lines and little sugar paste flowers.

I just used normal round cupcake cases to put them in and pinched the corners to make into squares.

I took thwm into work the next day and the icing had soaked into the cake a little, although it didn't affect the taste luckily. So I’d recommend either eating on the same day, or, what I’m going to try next time is icing them with buttercream then rolled fondant icing!

Baking with Trex - Part 1, Choc orange cupcakes

I’m sure loads of people have heard about Trex but until last week (during my cupcake course) I’d never heard of the stuff. Well this has now become a must in my baking going forward!

It was my birthday last weekend so I wanted to take cakes into work. I wanted to get Trex to make the frosting I’d learnt in the cupcake workshop.

On the Trex packaging though it said it was perfect for all sorts of baking so instead of buying butter I thought I’d use Trex for EVERYTHING!

At £1.28 for 500g it also works out much cheaper than butter (£1.19 for Sainsburys basic unsalted 250g). This makes me like it even more!

I wanted to make chocolate orange cupcakes and strawberry fondant fancies.

In part 1 of Baking with Trex I’m going to show you how I made my chocolate orange cupcakes.

I used a basic Victoria sponge recipe for the basis of each recipe.

• 150g Trex

• 150g Caster Sugar

• 3 eggs

• 150g Self raising flour

Cream the sugar and Trex together. As you can see, when it came to creaming the Trex and sugar it doesn’t look very appealing! It is softer than butter though so that makes life easier!

Once creamed add the other ingredients (as per my cupcake course post I whisked the eggs first and added a spoonful of flour to stop the curdling which always seems to happen to me)!

I then added the rind of two oranges to add the orangey flavour.

I added my mixture in to these cute cupcake cases that I found in TK Max- £3.99 for 80! They’re really good quality too.

In my cupcake course post I also said about getting to know your oven. Most recipes call for 180degs to bake cupcakes but I did a couple of test cakes and mine baked evenly and flat at 150degs! Quite a difference.

Then the rest went into the oven for 20-25 minutes.

Then my favourite part, the icing! I got to use my new icing set which also came from TK Max. This is a Wilton set which had the nozel that creates cute icing roses (Wilton 1M). This set was £9.99 but came with 4 nozels and 8 good quality icing bags so I didn’t think that was too bad.  

I then made the icing with…Trex!

• 200g Trex

• 500g Icing sugar

• 4 table spoons of milk

• Freshly squeezed orange juice

• 50g Cocoa

To create the rose use the 1M nozel and start in the centre and swirl out to the edge.

I then added little sugar paste flowers to hide where the icing swirl finished!

I personally think that the cakes I've made with Trex tasted nicer than with butter. I think Trex gives a smoother batter and a "softer" spongier cake! Trex is the way forward people!

Part 2 – Strawberry fondant fancies will be on the way soon!