Christmas Cookies, Cakes and Gingerbread Houses...

Happy Christmas to all or should I say Happy Baking Season! 

My homemade Peppermint bark to rival Williams Sonoma

I am from a long line of 'fill the biscuit tin, in case someone pops in' women. Traditionally we also delivered Christmas biscuits (cookies) to a few lucky folks at Christmas time. So when the calendar hits December, I start big time planning. Who am I kidding, it happens long before December.

So you'll understand, we've been busy in this house over the last few weeks. Like many others, I love to give cookies at Christmas. The giving list gets longer every year; and despite having some tried and true Christmas cookie recipes I always feel compelled to try out a few new ones.

This year I am linking the recipes I have used alongside a few snaps of the final products. This is as much for me next year as it is for any readers so apologies for poorer grammar than usual. I'm in a rush to get back to the kitchen action.

Here goes:

My particular favored new recipe is for Peppermint Bark. I was determined not to pay $25 a box this year at Williams Sonoma, so found a recipe for me to make my own. Success!!

I have a ginger obsession at this time of year so one of the many recipes I use is the following Ginger Chocolate Chip Blondies. They are so good...

Continuing on the theme and desperately trying to harness my control frickery, my girls and I got up to gingerbread men and house making, using the following healthier recipe from Heidi at 101 cookbooks. These are wholewheat gingerbread men!

This is the girls playing with the scraps at the end

House components and little guys

Decorating time

The finished product; again an exercise in self control for me!

My Mum usually makes me my Christmas cake, in fact, I'm ashamed to say, I've never made one before. This year I was going to skip it as we are not having any family visiting. However Nigella got the best of me with her Chocolate Fruit Cake from Feast. It looks amazing, is soaking in Kahlua as I type and boasts one of my favorite combinations prunes and chocolate. Haven't tasted yet but can't imagine it will disappoint. It did take me a whole morning on my own to complete though; even the lining of the tin requited a lot of concentration and 25 minutes! 

These little fellas below are ready to go out; in the packages are Chocolate Crackle Cookies, a recipe. surprisingly, from McKormick spices. They include Roasted Saigon Cinnamon and Ancho Chile Pepper but are basically a double chocolate cookie with a kick. Yummy adult cookies but my kids love them too. They freeze amazingly too.

The other cookies in the packages are a recipe from the boys at Baked. The cookies are Oatmeal Cherry Chocolate chip from "Baked; New Frontiers in Baking". Very delicious.

Oatmeal Cherry Chocolate Chip Cookies

Today, Nigella linked to her Christmas Chocolate Biscuits, and they looked so easy and sounded so simple, I just had to give them a go:

They're similar little chocolate shortbreads with chocolate frosting...mmm

One last link; as yet I've only made the dough (it's sitting in the fridge) but no mention of Christmas cookies/ biscuits whatever you want to call them, is complete without these. This recipe for Chewy Chocolate Gingerbread Cookies was posted by me way back in March, but it is "Christmas in a cookie" for me.

Happy Baking!

Merry Christmas! 

Happy Holidays!

Fresh Apricot Cake

Apricot Cake



There are a million other things that I could have productively employed myself with, the evening I made this cake. However, after the kids went to bed and with my husband working late, I turned on the oven to bake.

The quality of my baking recently had taken a nosedive. Ordinarily I can rely on my ability to produce a decent baking creation but the last 2 times I baked, have produced less than perfect results. Having considered the possible problem, I decided to firmly place the blame on the presence of my children whilst baking! Seriously though, while I desperately want them to learn to cook and bake with me; and to create happy memories of us doing so, I really find it hard to keep calm as the kitchen gets trashed!

So, I had a happy moment, ON MY OWN, with full concentration on a Clotilde recipe for fresh apricot cake. As you may remember, I'm a huge fan of her recipes. I bought some amazing fresh apricots at the market the other day which had been gently nudging me all week to find a moment to bake with them.

The cake, I'll freely admit, is hardly changed from Clotilde's original, but I couldn't resist sharing it. All I did was swapped in some whole wheat pastry flour; the rest is left, as instructed by the master. It's a great summer dessert, morning coffee cake, maybe even breakfast but definitely company friendly; I think you'll agree it's a looker! More than that though, the combination of the sweet but slightly tart fruit with the cake and a blob of Greek yogurt...well, just delicious.

Fresh Apricot Cake

(based on Clotilde's Apricot Coffee Cake)



Fresh Apricot cake


Ingredients

1 lb/450g fresh apricots, washed and sliced into 8
1 cup/ 125g all purpose flour
3/4 cup/ 90g whole wheat pastry flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
10 tablespoons/ 5oz/ 150g butter
1 tablespoon milk
1/2 cup/ 100g sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten

Topping

1 tablespoon sour cream or Greek yogurt
1 tablespoon sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 360°F or 180°C
2. Butter a 9" springform cakepan
3. Place the flours, baking powder, baking soda and salt in the food processor and pulse until mixed
4. Add the butter and mix again
5. Add the sugar then mix again
6. Add the egg and milk and pulse until just combined. Do not overmix.
7. Press the batter into the cake pan and flatten the top
8. Arrange the apricots on the top
9. then mix together the topping ingredients and pour over the cake
10. Bake for approx 40-45 mins or until the cake is golden on top.
11. Turn the oven off but leave the cake in the oven for a further 10-15 minutes
12. Let it cool to room temperature and dust it with confectioners (icing) sugar just before serving.
13. Serve at room temperature or cool from the fridge with a blob of sour cream or Greek yogurt







Enjoy!

Time for Birthday Cake!



Each time there is any sort of a celebration in our house, be it a festive holiday or a birthday, I habitually pull out my Nigella books. It's really a pleasure to have an excuse to browse through them again and "Feast" is invariably the winner when it comes to celebrations. I do love that book and quite honestly most of Nigellas recipes in general. I won't say it's a problem, but she's obviously not as driven to take the healthy option as me, so her recipes spell indulgence. All the more fun.

Anyway, my husband just caught up with me; he was 40 a couple of days ago. So I left out "Feast" for him to peruse and choose his cake. My strong pointers were the chocolate guinness cake or the chocolate orange (again that theme!). It's lucky he's a fan of chocolate too, or maybe we would not be a match!

Anyway, he chose the chocolate orange, which pleased me, not only because I adore the combination, but the cake has a very unusual composition as you'll see. I suppose it could be argued there's a nod to the healthy here; the cake has no butter or regular flour, but's it still a cake and tastes very decadent.

This cake suits my lifestyle very well; as I've mentioned before, I'm a planner, so the fact that the orange needs cooked for 2 hours and cooled, suited me fine. I did it the day before and kept it in the fridge. One less step on the big day. I also made my own ground almonds, as I was so outraged at the cost of pre-ground almonds in my supermarket. I just whizzed them up in the food processor with a little sugar which apparantly helps absorb the oil and they are then less likely to turn into almond butter.

As you'll see from the photos, the girls loved it too; my 4 year old actually requested it for her birthday too (although it's likely that request will be replaced many times in the next 6 months!).

Chocolate Orange Cake

adapted from a recipe by Nigella Lawson, Feast



Chocolate Orange Cake (with 2 year old hovering dangerously close)



Ingredients

2 small or 1 large, thin skinned orange

6 eggs

1 heaped teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

2 cups/ 200g ground almonds

1 1/4 cups/ 250g superfine or caster sugar

1/2 cup/ 50g unsweetened cocoa powder, sifted

Directions

1. Place the orange(s) in a pan and cover with water. Bring to a boil, reduce to simmer for 2 hours or until they are soft.
2. Drain the the orange and cool it. When the orange is cool, preheat the oven to 350°F
3. Butter an 8" springform pan, then line it with parchment paper.
4. Cut the orange in half to remove the seeds, and pulse the whole orange in the food processor.
5. To the orange, add the eggs, baking powder, baking soda, ground almonds, sugar and cocoa. Pulse until it is mixed thoroughly.
6. Pour the batter into the pan and place in the center of the oven for approximately 1 hour or until the tester comes out clean.
7. I loosely covered mine in foil for the last 20 minutes as it seemed to be cooking too quickly. (Nigella's tip)
8. Let the cake cool in the pan and when cold remove and decorate.







Now, here's the surprising thing, Nigella recommends just a few orange peels on top, but my children (and I quite frankly) objected. Just not birthday-ish enough. So I made a quick cream cheese frosting (low fat cream cheese and confectioner sugar) then added some zested orange. Smeared it all over and all good except we couldn't get a candle to stay upright, hence the candle in the orange.

Enjoy!



Mini Sticky Chocolate Cakes



It was my (uh um) 40th birthday yesterday. 2 reasons I'm writing about that; cake and photography. For all those of you who have been offended by my amateurish photography to date; take heart. My girls got me a tripod and a book on food photography for my birthday. So hang on in there while I read up and all should improve!

Cake; well, my husband was totally at a loss as to what to do about cake. While he can cook, he really doesn't bake, so making one wasn't an option. Also, knowing my active membership in the "nasty ingredient police", he was nervous to buy one. A birthday cake filled with trans fat and artificial flavors is not my idea of a celebration.

So, no cake. I planned on making my own actually, call me nuts, but I'd have been happy to if I'd had a moment. Instead, I spent the afternoon with my kids at the merry go round and in the Disney store. When they're happy, I'm happy!

Anyway, I'll admit I have been thinking of cake rather a lot recently, and I have a chocolate and zucchini recipe for sticky chocolate cake, that I've been meaning to try for months.

http://chocolateandzucchini.com/archives/2009/05/sticky_chocolate_cake.php

Clotilde's recipes are amazing and always a little different. Check out her blog if you haven't before.

Anyway, lets talk more about the key to the stickiness; prunes, or to give them their "post rehab" name, dried plums! For those US readers, please read on. Give prunes another try. They are not only good for "getting things moving", if you know what I mean. They have an amazing depth of flavor which goes perfectly with chocolate, and when you use them you can invariably cut down the fat and sugar in the baked product. Quite honestly I love them on their own. They do not need to be dressed up, but dressed up they are, in the following recipe.

Many years ago, Delia Smith, (the UK's answer to Julia Child), introduced me to the pairing of chocolate and prunes, with her Chocolate Prune Brownies. Her "How to cook: Book 2" has a whole section on the pairing. The recipe became my "go to" brownie recipe of my 20's. Shortly after starting a new job here in NYC, I brought in a batch for a birthday celebration in work. I was so proud of my delicious brownies and they went down a storm in the office.

Then, I was asked what was my secret? Prunes, I innocently replied, unaware of the stigma attached to the prune in the US. Well, suffice to say, I went home with the rest of the brownies. My boss was most perturbed, as he had had 3 by this point; how to impress a new boss! They were all under the impression you should only eat prunes if your Doctor had recommended them! I can assure you, nobody's afternoon was ruined by too many prunes.

I have been amused in recent years here, to see the prune producers, changing their marketing strategy to "dried plums", in an effort to fool the US market into eating them again.

Anyway, my daughters were both at preschool this morning, so I ignored the housework and errands needing attention and made cakes. I suppose they're really muffins but they really are quite light and cake-like. Plus, since it's my birthday season, I just have to call them cakes!

As usual, I couldn't stick to the recipe; Clotilde recommends steeping the prunes in your favorite brandy; I used cranberry juice for my kids sake. I substituted half of the flour for whole wheat pastry and added molasses instead of maple syrup. I also used dark brown sugar instead of light, all in the hope of achieving a dark and delicious looking cake.

The cakes are totally delicious as they are, but I plan to build on this recipe in future. They would be amazing with chocolate ganache on top, and/or (nod to Delia) chocolate dipped prunes on top.
I also think they could accommodate more cocoa powder to good effect. When I try any of these ideas, I will add on to this post to share the love!

Mini Sticky Chocolate Cakes

Yields 12 muffins/ mini cakes

Ingredients

8 oz/ 230g prunes (dried plums), pitted

1/3 cup/ 80 ml cranberry juice (substitute brandy, pomegranate juice, black tea)

1/2 cup/ 120ml buttermilk or plain yogurt

1 egg lightly beaten

6 tablespoons/ 75 g dark brown sugar

3 tablespoons/ molasses (substitute maple syrup or treacle)

1/2 cup/ 60g all purpose flour

1/2 cup/ 60g whole wheat pastry flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon sea salt

4 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder (sifted after measuring)

4 oz/ 115g bittersweet chocolate chips or chopped from a bar.

Directions

1. Place half of the prunes in the soaking liquid of choice and warm slightly. Leave to cool and soak. (Honestly, overnight would be best, but I didn't have the time)
2. Preheat the oven to 350°F/ 180°C
3. Grease the muffin pan
4. Place the remaining half of prunes and the buttermilk in the food processor and process until smooth
5. Transfer the prunes and buttermilk to a large mixing bowl and whisk in the eggs, then the sugar, then the molasses.
6. Cut the soaked prunes in half with scissors and set aside. Discard the remaining liquid.
7. In another mixing bowl, whisk together the flours, cocoa, baking powder, soda, and salt.
8. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and stir until just combined. No not overstir.
9. Finally fold in the chocolate chips
10. Using an ice cream scoop, fill the muffin tins to about 2/3 full. Then squish a few prune halves in on the top of the batter.
11. Bake in the center of the oven for 15-18 minutes or until a tester comes out clean

Enjoy!

p.s. I have just kicked these up a notch by smearing the tops with melted chocolate and a dollop of sour cream. Then I plopped another half prune on the top. Amazing.

Here's what they looked like



An Excuse for Double Chocolate....

Time to celebrate; my husband is home! Yippee! Single parenting is over for another day (yes he's away again tomorrow night). So bring on the cupcakes!

Actually truth be known, I mustn't steal the thunder from my friend Tammi; it's her birthday. It didn't seem fair to me that she hosts her own birthday/Super Bowl party, so the least I could do is bring her some birthday cakes!

I toyed with many different ideas for today's recipe, but it all comes back to a tried and tested chocolate cupcake recipe that I have made repeatedly for birthdays. These cupcakes are relatively light and keep well if you need to make them a day ahead. I produced 70 or so for my daughters' joint birthday party in the fall; not to mention sending them to school and making them for their actual birthdays! My point is, it's a well tested recipe! The base recipe comes from the Cooking Light, Quick Baking , 2010 issue, although as usual is given the "Kat ate that" treatment.

I had a peaceful morning on my own baking; that's the ultimate relaxation for me. My husband had taken the kids off campus, for a chunk of time, for me to "be" in my kitchen. After a leisurely breakfast without getting up and down 10 times to refill milk, mop up spills, etc. etc., I embarked on the cupcakes.

My only caution with this recipe is, that it only makes 10 cupcakes. I doubled the recipe for the Superbowl party this afternoon and scraped out only 21 cupcakes from the recipe. Fine for a normal day, but not enough for the party.

So, with an empty house, I realised I had the perfect opportunity to try out one of the boys at "Baked Explorations" creations; Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cake with cream cheese frosting. Does that not sound fabulous? I like to be on my own when trying out their recipes. I feel to do them justice, I don't want to manage the two tikes and where their fingers are, while baking a new and special recipe.

It's an interesting one; the oatmeal and butter are soaked/melted together with boiling water and left to stand for 30 minutes. Then they are added to the rest of the ingredients. The cake effectively turns into a cross between a blondie and and oatmeal chocolate chip cookie. Divine!! I reduced the sugar, didn't add the suggested liquor (very unlike me!) and substituted some wholewheat flour. The Baked boys suggest a cream cheese frosting, although in my opinion it really makes the whole thing almost too sweet because there are a lot of chocolate chips in there. All a matter of taste though, and far be from me to criticise the Gods of baking.

Anyway, on to the results

Chocolate Cupcakes

Yields 10

Ingredients

1 cup all purpose flour

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa

1 teaspoon baking soda

pinch of salt

2/3 cup granulated sugar

1/4 cup/ 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup low fat buttermilk

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350°F
2. Line a muffin pan with cupcake liners
3. Spoon and level flour into the measuring cup and sift over a large bowl with the cocoa, baking soda and salt. Then whisk the ingredients to mix lightly
4. Beat the sugar and butter with an electric mixer for about 3 minutes
5. Add the eggs, one at a time, then the vanilla. Beat until well combined
6. With the mixer on low and starting and ending with the flour, alternate adding the flour and buttermilk to the mixer bowl
7. Mix until just combined; over mixing will make a tough cupcake
8. Using an ice cream scoop, fill the muffin pan and bake for approximately 18 minutes or until a tester comes out clean
9. Cool in the pan for a couple of minutes then take the cupcakes out and cool completely on a wire rack

These are a fantastic vehicle for your favorite frosting; I love cream cheese (see below) but I have also gone the simple route in the past and dusted them with confectioner sugar; they looked just lovely.

Enjoy!



Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cake

based on a recipe in "Baked Explorations, classic American desserts reinvented"

http://bakednyc.com/



Yields one 9x13" pan

Ingredients

8 oz chocolate chips

1 cup plus 2 tablepoons all purpose flour

1/2 cup wholewheat pastry flour

1 cup rolled oats

1/2 cup/ 1 stick unsalted butter, cut into small cubes (cold or softened)

1 1/4 cup boiling water

2 eggs

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Ingredients for the Cream Cheese Frosting

5 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

5 1/2 oz cream cheese, softened

2 cups sifted confectioner sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 375°F
2. Butter a 9 x 13 " baking dish. The Baked boys recommend a glass one but mine has a frozen sausage and bean casserole in it right now, so I baked in a regular metal baking pan
3. Soak the oatmeal and butter in the boiling water. Leave for 30 seconds before stirring then stir until the butter has melted. Set aside to cool for 30 minutes
4. Toss the chocolate chips in a bowl with the 2 tablespoons of all purpose flour (this prevents the chips from sinking when baked)
5. When the oatmeal mixture has cooled, whisk together by hand, the eggs, then add the sugars, salt, baking soda, baking powder, and cinnamon until combined
6. Fold in the cooled oatmeal mixture and then the flours
7. Finally, gently fold in the chocolate chips
8. Pour the batter into the baking pan
9. Bake for 40-45 minutes, turning gently, halfway through cooking. When done, a toothpick should come out clean

Directions to make the Frosting

1. Using an electric mixer, beat the butter until smooth
2. Add the cream cheese and beat on high until well combined
3. Sift in the confectioner sugar and beat until smooth
4. Refridgerate, covered,  for 30 minutes prior to using

A note on the frosting; make sure the butter and cream cheese are at room temperature as they will not become smooth if too cold.

A frosted cake will keep up to 3 days if refridgerated.

Enjoy!