Category: Cakes/Cookies

After watching an episode of Rachel Allen: Bake where she baked meringues, I was inspired to use up the egg whites I had left in my fridge. Her recipe was really good, they turned out crispy on the outside and chewy in the middle.

Pink meringues

4 egg whites

a pinch of salt

300 g caster sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

a drop or two of red food colouring

Whisk the egg whites and salt into soft peaks with an electric whisk on high speed, add the sugar bit by bit and whisk until the mixture is quite solid and don’t fall out when you turn the bowl over. Add the vanilla and food colouring. Either mix the food colouring in well, so the mixture is evenly pink or just mix it in a little to get a rippled effect. Put spoonfuls of the mixture onto parchment paper and bake for 45 minutes in 140C. Then turn off the oven and put the oven door ajar and leave them to cool for 20 minutes.  

In the second round of the quest for the perfect Madeleines, Christopher is the one baking. They have started a bake off in his office, and these were his contribution.

The recipe is from the book How to eat in by Adam Byatt, the chef at Trinity, one of our favourite restaurants. We were actually a bit disappointed with the recipe… Just like the last recipe we tried, the cakes are lovely, light and fluffy, but they don’t taste like perfect Madeleines should. We think they need more vanilla to them, and maybe more butter too, even though there is plenty in this recipe. The quest continues.

Has anyone got a great recipe we could try?

Madeleines, about 25

1 vanilla pod

400 g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

400 g butter

9 eggs

450 g caster sugar

35 g clear honey

Preparation: Split the vanilla pod in half lengthways and scrape out the seeds. Sift the flour and baking powder together in a bowl. Roughly dice the butter and melt it in the microwave or in a bowl over simmering water, making sure it dies not get too hot. Remove the bowl from the pan.

Brush the cups of your moulds with soft butter, then dust them with flour, place in the fridge to get cold.

Method: Put the eggs, sugar and honey into a bowl. Add the vanilla seeds and beat well with a wooden spoon or an electric mixer until evenly mixed. Now add the flour and baking powder and continue mixing until well incorporated. Add the melted butter and incorporate further. Transfer the mix to a clean bowl, place in the fridge and leave to rest for at least an hour (up to 2 days).

When you are ready to bake the Madeleines, preheat the oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Spoon the mixture into the cups, filling them three-quarters full, and bake for 12 minutes, until they become firm to the touch. Remove the moulds from the oven and allow to stand for 1 minute before turning the Madeleines out of the cups and dusting them with icing sugar.

I seem to spend every Sunday in the kitchen lately, and I absolutely love it, although I nearly overdid it this Sunday with the slow-cooking casserole, eggs benedict for breakfast and baking in between. It was quite late when I got to sit down and I realised how tired I was. And happy! Cooking and baking really makes me happy. On Sunday I tried a few new things, and fairly complicated recipes, but sometimes making a simple weekday dinner can make me just as happy. Or baking an old favourite recipe that I know by heart…

This cookie is related to the crumbly vanilla cookie I mentioned not too long ago, and it is really yummy. I can’t really say which one I like the most, but this combination is more unusual and the crunch from the cornflakes is great. Try them both and see which one you prefer! I promise, they’re both really good!

Crumbly vanilla cookies with cornflakes and chocolate, about 25

100 g softened butter

200 ml granulated sugar

100 ml rapeseed oil/cooking oil (one without strong flavours)

1 tbsp vanilla sugar

1 tsp cooking ammonium

400 ml plain flour

2 tbsp potato flour (can be excluded, just add a tad more wheat flour)

200 ml cornflakes

50 g dark chocolate, chopped

Beat the butter and sugar fluffy, beat in the oil. Mix in the other ingredients and spoon the mixture onto a baking sheet. It is quite stodgy and crumbly already here, so I help the mixture to stick together by pressing it into a ball with my hand as well. Bake for 13-15 minutes in the middle section of the oven in 175C.

Leave to cool on a wire rack, and if you want to make them look pretty, melt some chocolate and pour over them with a spoon to create lines. Leave to dry on the wire rack.

 

 Remember these?

  

They came to good use when I baked Nigella’s cut out cookies from How to be a domestic goddess.  It is the first time I’ve baked these type of biscuits, the only thing I use my cookie cutters for is ginger bread cookies once a year. It was a really good recipe, easy to make, easy to roll, easy to cut out and transfer to a baking sheet, and thankfully they were very tasty too. I will definitely make them again, and I know that for sure because I put half the dough in the freezer. 🙂

Cut out cookies, plenty

180 g softened butter

200 g caster sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla essence

400 g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

Beat the butter and sugar fluffy, then add the eggs and vanilla. Mix the dry ingredients in another bowl and fold it into the mixture. Knead the dough in the bowl and add more flour if it feels too sticky. Cut the dough in half, wrap with clingfilm and put in the fridge for an hour (or freeze one half). Later roll out the dough on a flour-spinkled surface and make sure you sprinkle flour on the rolling pin too. I thought 2-3mm was a good thickness, but you can have the cookies thinner or thicker if you like. Transfer the cookies to a baking sheet and bake in 180C for 8-12 minutes. Leave to cool on a wire rack completely before icing them.

Icing

1 tbsp milk

royal icing sugar

Pour the milk into a bowl and add icing sugar little by little while whisking away until you have the consistency you like. Add some food colouring to make it more interesting.

This is neither a cookie nor a biscuit, but still something sweet to eat with your coffee, a ritual we in Sweden call fika. In my family we do it all the time! And this recipe is the best one I’ve ever come across on these crisps, havreflarn in Swedish, it is of course my mother’s recipe and the reason it is so great is because the outsides are very crisp and the middle is a bit chewy. You can eat them as they are, or roll them around a wooden spoon handle when warm to make them look fancy, stick one into a sundae, put vanilla ice cream or butter cream or whipped cream with vanilla in between two to make a sandwich, and all ways are good! 🙂

Oat crisps (Havreflarn), about 50

300 ml oats

200 ml granulated sugar

50 ml syrup

150 g melted butter

50 ml cream

150 ml plain flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

Combine all the ingredients and place dollops the size of a teaspoon on parchment paper on a baking tray quite far apart, they expand a lot in the oven. I only placed 9 on each sheet and that worked perfectly. Bake in 175 C oven for 8 minutes. Leave to cool on a wire rack.

I think I had my first crush on Daim instead of a boy. We used to eat lots of daim bars at home when I was a child, and I loved them, but I didn’t have a crush on daim until I met daim icecream! OMG, it was sooo good! I still love it and everything with daim in it, and at the moment I might have a small crush on these cookies. They are so lovely I just can’t stop eating them.

Daim cookies, about 20

2 daim bars

300 ml plain flour

100 ml granulated sugar

1 tbsp syrup

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

150 g softened butter

Chop the daim. Mix all ingredients in a bowl, add the daim last. Shape into a roll, about 5 cm in diameter. Dress in parchment paper and leave in the fridge for an hour. Cut the roll into 5 mm thick slices, place on parchment paper on a baking tray. Bake in 200 degree oven for 8 minutes.