Chocolate Oat Biscuits

Chewy and full of chocolate, these are good biscuits.  I’ve made these lots of times but have only just managed to take pictures of them.  Details below.

• 150 g butter
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup caster sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup plain flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 2 cups oats
• 100 – 150 g milk chocolate (choc chips, or roughly chopped)

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.  Cream butter and both sugars until light and fluffy.  Add vanilla and egg and mix till well combined.  Mix in the flour and baking powder.  Add the oats and chocolate and mix through. Place tablespoon sized balls of dough on lined baking trays and bake for 12-15 minutes.  Cool on a wire rack.  The recipe suggests you can get 24 biscuits out of the mixture and I managed 21.

mmmmmm chocolate.....

Cheesecake brownies

Mmmmmm.  They’re delicious and combine two favourite foods – chocolate and cheesecake.  The recipe is pretty simple and they don’t take too long to make.  And in any case, they are more than worth the effort.  Here are the details.

• 150 g butter
• 300g cooking chocolate (Milk or dark depending on your preference, I ‘ve made the brownies with both and in combination)
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup caster sugar
• 1 1/2 cups plain flour
• 1/4 cup sour cream
• 250g cream cheese

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.  Melt butter and chocolate in a small saucepan on a very low heat until they are fully combines.  You could use a double boiler if you’re worried about the chocolate seizing but it should be fine as long as the heat is low.  Set aside to cool. 

In a small bowl mix together the room temperature cream cheese and 1/3 cup of the caster sugar.  When they are fully combined, add one of the eggs and mix thoroughly. 

In another larger bowl whisk the two remaining eggs and then mix in the remaining 2/3 cup sugar.  To this mixture, add the chocolate mixture and combine well.  When the ingredients are smooth and glossy, add the flour 1/2 cup at a time, mixing well after each addition.  Then fold in the sour cream until well combined. 

Line a brownie pan or 20cm square cake tin with baking paper and spoon the chocolate mixture in.  Make sure it’s spread into the corners.  Spoon the cream cheese mixture on top of this and use a knife or spoon to create marbling in the mixture.  Bake for 30-35 minutes and set aside to cool in the pan afterwards. I found this made 18-21 brownies depending on how you divide up the pan.

the finished product

‘Cos it’s cold in this here corner of the world

Or about as cold as it gets in a subtropical climate.  Near summer like weather for most of the year does not adequately prepare you for the few really cold weeks we get.  Rather than making more puddings (because I think I’ve eaten enough of them lately) I decided to make soup.  Not my Mother’s soup recipe either (because ham hock – I think that’s what it is – soup is not my favourite) but a new recipe that I half made up for chicken and rice soup.

I really like rice, in fact I like most forms of carbohydrates.  I didn’t use any special rice for the recipe just the basmati I had in the cupboard but I think it would probably work a little better with medium or short grain.  Here are the details (and yes there are no picture but it’s a pale white rice soup, it was only going to look so photogenic).  It was delicious though and very filling.

• 1 cup rice 
• 2 litres stock (I used a combination of chicken and vegetable stock)
• half onion – diced
• 2 cloves garlic
• inch of ginger
• pepper
• salt
• 1 shallot
• cooking oil
• 200g diced chicken pieces

Dice onion and slice garlic and ginger finely.  Heat small amount of oil in a saucepan and cook onion on low heat until soft.  Add garlic and ginger to the onion and cook briefly.  Once combined, add rice and mix well.  When the rice is well coated, add the stock, and then the pepper and salt to taste.  I wanted my soup to be peppery so I added quite a bit from the pepper grinder. Cook on low heat until rice grains are fully cooked through and soup appears thick.  When the rice is about half done and the stock is hot, add the diced chicken, mix well and continue cooking.  I didn’t time my soup (sorry!) but it was on for at least one hour, more likely an hour and a half.  Cooking time will vary depending on rice used but you don’t want the soup to become a gluggy, unappealing mixture.  When cooked, slice shallot finely and add into mixture.  Serve.

This made enough soup for approximately four people.  I’ve had two big servings of it and there is still lots left.  It’s warming, filling, peppery and there are nice little pieces of ginger that add some spice.

Buttery lemon biscuits

Welcome to post number 100!  I’d like to think I had something exciting in store but alas, all I have is a recipe for delicious biscuits that I somehow failed to take photos of.  Not quite sure how I spaced out on that one but the biscuits have moved along to their final destination as a morning tea offering at work, so no chance of catching up with them. 

I found a recipe for lemon and poppyseed biscuits on Taste.com.  It looked pretty reasonable so I thought I’d try it out even though I didn’t have any usable poppyseeds.  The recipe worked quite well, and for once I managed to make the number of biscuits the recipe suggested the dough would produce.  Bits and pieces as follows.

• 150g butter
• 1 cup caster sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 cups plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• grated rind of one lemon
• juice of 1/3 lemon

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius (160 for fan forced).  Cream butter and sugar, then add egg and mix well. Fold in flour and baking powder, when combined add grated rind and juice.  Roll dough into 30 small balls and place, with space between them, on lined baking trays.  Bake for 12-15 minutes until lightly browned.

My biscuits turned out fairly well, lemony and buttery with a slightly crunchy outer layer.  They didn’t spread out enough to look like the pictures on Taste.com but I think I had the oven turned up too hot.  I baked them at 180 degrees instead of 160 but they were still cooked through and buttery, crumbly inside.  They just looked more like bite sized cookies instead of larger biscuits.  Sprinkling some sugar on top of the dough before baking would have worked quite well too.

More rainbow cakes!

While checking out Tastespotting recently I came across this blog entry for a six layer rainbow cake.  It looks like a bit of work (the layers were all made separately) but the colours are sooooo bright and appealing.

Apple and cinnamon muffins

I tried a new recipe for apple and cinnamon muffins the other day (the original is here).  The muffins turned out OK but they weren’t great.  Not sure what contributed to this, I might have over mixed the batter or maybe they just weren’t sweet enough but they were still alright to eat.   Anyway, here’s the recipe mostly given in the hope that someone else might try it too and get a better result. 

On second thought looking at the recipe, I might not have put in quite enough baking powder.  All my recipes are scrawled on scrap paper so the chance to misread it is possible.  It’s entirely likely I used one teaspoon as opposed to one tablespoon baking powder.  So I’m not going to write the recipe off just yet.

• 2 cups plain flour
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 2 tspn cinnamon
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• apples (I used a tin of pie apple chopped up)
• 125g melted butter – cooled
• 2 eggs – whisked
• 3/4 cup milk
• apple cinnamon crunchola muesli for topping

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.  Combine flour, baking powder, cinnamon and sugar.  In another bowl combine butter, eggs and milk.  Add wet mixture to dry mixture.  When mixed through add chopped apples.  Divide into muffin pans and top with crunchy muesli.  The original recipe was meant to make twelve muffins but I made seventeen smaller ones.  Bake for twenty minutes, then cool on wire racks.

the finished product

Coffee and donut cupcakes

It’s like morning tea all rolled into one baked good.  Delicious and efficient.

More rainbow cupcakes

These ones aren’t so blindingly colourful as the last lot but they are quite cute.

Pear and nectarine crumble

I decided the best way to use up my excess of fruit was to chop it all up and make a crumble.  This one contains pears and white nectarines.  I used just under a kilo of pears (I forget which kind, they had green skin) and about four nectarines.  The crumble topping was made up of about 125 grams of butter, some caster sugar, plain flour, a few hand fulls of rolled oats and some chopped walnuts.  I didn’t follow a recipe because I figured I could only get it so wrong. I mixed it all up till it looked about right, added it on top of the fruit and baked it in the oven for about an hour at 180 degrees Celsius.

It didn’t turn out too badly, the top was nice and crunchy – the oats and walnuts were the best bit.  The pears cooked up lovely but the nectarines were a bit smushy and tasteless.  I’d definitely cook another crumble but I’d use firmer fruit like pears or apples and less butter in the topping.

Raspberry crumble bars

Sometimes I cook out of boredom, it’s something to do at home that’s not computer or tv related.  Sometimes I cook because I’ve got ingredients in the cupboard, fridge or freezer that just can’t be ignored.  I bought some frozen raspberries recently (they are pretty much my favourite berries) and had been wondering what to cook with them.

I found this recipe for berry crumb bars that comes from All Recipes via Smitten Kitchen.  I’ve adjusted it to suit the ingredients I had available and the fact I use the metric not imperial system of measurement (or possible a strange combo of the two).  These bars looked so delicious, I decided that my yummy raspberries would be well served being cooked up in buttery pastry.

Here’s the recipe:

• 1 cup caster sugar
• 1tspn baking powder
• 3 cups plain flour
• 250 grams butter
• 1 egg
• 1/4 tspn salt
• 1 lemon – zest and juice
• 300 grams raspberries (frozen)
• 1/2 cup caster sugar
• 4 tspns cornflour

Preheat oven to 190 degrees Celsius.  The original recipe recommends using a 9 by 13 inch tray.  I just used the one I had that looked about right (I’ve no idea of it’s real measurements).  In one bowl I combined the 3 cups flour, one cup sugar  and baking powder, then mixed in the lemon zest and salt.  I then cut in the butter and egg until the mixture was well combined and had a crumb like texture.  I pressed half the pastry into the bottom of the lined pan.  In another bowl I mixed together the half cup of sugar, cornflour and lemon juice.  To this mixture I added the raspberries and mixed till they were well covered in the mixture.  The other half of the pastry was crumbled on top of the raspberries and then the whole thing went in the oven for 45 minutes.

It was definitely a success.  The raspberry crumble bars were crumbly and tangy and tasted extra delicious with some vanilla ice cream (I didn’t wait for them to cool down).  Also, now I’ve checked out an online conversion tool the recipe could probably do with about 25 grams less butter (it is fall apart crumbly – but still tasty) and maybe only half the juice of a lemon (because tangy is nice but it would give a more mellow taste).  The frozen raspberries cooked up  a treat and became gooey and jammy in consistency. Check it out.