white chocolate & cranberry cookies

I discovered this recipe in an advert in my delicious food magazine last Christmas. The advert was for Carnation Condensed Milk. In my view, Condensed Milk is the  secret ingredient required for my idea of the perfect cookie. Chewy & soft with a slightly crisp edge. Yum.
So, when I saw the advert, I knew I needed to go & buy some condensed milk at the soonest possible moment. Perfectly Christmassy with their cranberries, I thought, but having tasted them, I have become a little hooked and so this is no longer a recipe to be reserved for Christmas. This is one that should be baked as frequently as you like. For breakfast, lunch & dinner and a treat to go with your afternoon coffee if you fancy. 


Thankfully, these cookies got me out of my marble rut with great ease. Well, almost. More about that in my next post. I had dried cranberries in the cupboard & I knew where they needed to go. Into a big old mixing bowl with some condensed milk, plenty of butter & a few other bits & bobs. So, off they went...


White Chocolate & Cranberry Cookies makes 50

ingredients

225g / 8oz unsalted butter, softened
225g / 8oz caster sugar
350g / 12oz self raising flour
150g /5.5oz white chocolate, chopped into chunks
397g tin condensed milk*
as many dried cranberries as you see fit!


* I didn't realise until baking a second batch of these cookies at home with my Mum last weekend that I have always used double the amount of condensed milk than the original recipe states. I tried using half the amount in my second batch & the cookies were still delicious but didn't spread as much, so were smaller, and they had less of a chewy-buttery feel to them. So I'm sticking with using too much. If you want to be slightly healthier, use a 170g tube of condensed milk  instead!

1) Pre-heat the oven to 180C /Gas Mark 4 / 350F. Grease 3 baking trays. You'll need to cook these in batches unless you happen to have an industrial sized double oven with lots of shelves, so I tend to use 3 trays at once. When the first batch has come out of the oven, I remove the cookies then regrease my original trays & use then again.

2) Beat together the butter & sugar. They don't need to be beaten for too long, just long enough to get them combined & a little bit fluffy.

3) Stir in the condensed milk.

4) Stir in the flour (no need to sieve) followed by the white chocolate & cranberries.

5) Using a teaspoon, place little balls of the cookie dough onto your baking trays, with plenty of space to spread. These guys love to take up as much space as possible when they go to hang out in their favourite place - the oven. 

6) Bake in the pre-heated oven for 12 minutes until going slightly golden around the edges. Remove from the oven & allow to cool on the baking tray for a couple of minutes. This will allow them time to harden slightly. If you try and remove them from the tray immediately, they'll be so soft that they'll break.

 
After a few minutes of resting time outside of the oven, remove from the baking trays and allow to cool on a wire rack, or just eat a few straight away while they're still warm. 
Because the quantities yield such a huge batch, you have more than enough to wrap a few up & give them away as presents, or to give to children as an after-school snack.

Cake Count :: 900

there's always more room for chocolate

So, you might be thinking that this little cookie looks very similar to another little chocolate cookie featured here a while ago.

I will forgive you for thinking that because yes, there is a slight similarity in that they are both beautifully chocolatey and a little crackly in appearance.

But. There is a beautiful difference between the two. Let me elaborate.

Sometimes you might be in need of a fast chocolate fix. My old favourite just does not quite match these shiny-cracked beauties in speed of getting from bowl to oven to mouth to satisfy that chocolate craving. These are so quick to make. 20 minutes from start to finish. I kid you not. They are softer, shinier and gooey-er than my old favourite - and the very reason that my old favourite is just that - old. These are the new kids on the block and they're here to stay.

I have made scores of these cookies over the last few months and I love them just as much every single time.

Without further ado, I give you...

The Chocolate Brownie Cookie

Ingredients:

200g dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids)
50g unsalted butter, very soft
2 eggs
150g caster sugar
25g plain flour
1 tbsp cocoa
¼ tsp baking powder
50g chocolate chopped (optional - I tend not to bother and save the chocolate for another occasion!)


1 :: Pre-heat the oven to 180C / Gas Mark 4 & grease 3 large baking trays
2 :: Break up the chocolate into squares, put them in a glass bowl and melt
in the microwave or in a glass bowl over a saucepan of simmering water.
3 :: Chop up the butter then stir into the chocolate. (The heat from the
chocolate melts the butter.)
4 :: In a different bowl, put the eggs and sugar in and use an electric mixer
to beat them for 4 minutes.
5 :: Beat in the chocolate to the egg and sugar mixture.
6 :: Sieve in the flour, baking powder and cocoa & gently fold in with a metal spoon.
8 :: If you are adding chocolate chunks, stir these in gently.
Place 1 heaped tsp of mixture onto the tray, leaving plenty of space in between each cookie.
10 :: Bake in the oven for 10-12 minutes. They will look soft when you take them
out, but that's ok, they'll get a bit harder when they cool down, and you don't want to lose the gooey-ness

If you'd like to add a bit of a twist, swap the regular dark chocolate for dark choc&orange. Trust me, you won't regret it if you do.


Cake Count: 660

B&W Pinwheels

A very good friend of mine had a little accident the other week involving her bike, some frost, her chin, the road and some glue.

So it was time to bake some get well soon biscuits.

They were a bit faffy to make in that chilling, rolling & lots of cling film is involved. I don't get on with cling film very well. Aussie's like to call it 'glad wrap'. I'm not quite sure why because it does not make my heart feel glad when I have a run in with sticky biscuit mixture and cling film. But there we go. That was what was required to make these beauties.

And I do think they are quite beautiful, if I may say so.

Cake Count :: 534

an unexpected favourite

Well this week has turned out to be another little boost towards my 2010 goal.

It all started on Monday evening. At the job I have that involves me cooking for some lovely people, I had been more productive than usual, so had less cooking to do on Tuesday. I asked the lady who I cook for if there was anything she'd like me to do instead of cooking as I'd have extra time on Tuesday, she said, 'you could bake some cakes for the kids?'

Aaaaah. Music to my ears.

At this, one of the children piped up, 'ooh can we have one of those tall square cakes?'

Interpretation provided by Mum: Battenburg.

I have to say, I do not like this cake, but I understand the beauty of it. So, I suggested a compromise:

Chocolate Chequerboard Cake.

But that is for another blog post.

{You're getting a glimpse into my rambly mind here. You see, I'd uploaded the photos for this blog post with the intention of telling you about my favourite cookie, but I have digressed. Back to the original.}

So anyway, after the mention of Chocolate Chequerboard Cake, one of the other children mentioned that on Thursday her school was having a non-uniform day in aid of Haiti, and she'd quite like to make something to sell at a stall at lunchtime.

{Interpretation: She'd like me to make something to sell at the stall. Fine by me.}

And that's where these cookies come in.

Up until 2007, I had not managed to bake a good cookie. The mixture would always look great, but would then spread and go all crispy in the baking process.

I have since then, discovered a secret ingredient: Condensed milk. What a beautiful ingredient. My cookie companion.

During a cookie conversation with a friend, I mention my lack of a good recipe, and she said, 'My mum has a great recipe for cookies. l've never tried it, but it's supposed to be really good. I'll get it for you.'

Now, I don't know about you, but often when people say they'll pass on a recipe, it doesn't happen. Not for lack of good intention, but because, with a recipe like this, as is so often the case, you need to go and find it / ask someone to pass it on, etc, and so the buck gets passed and dropped.

Thankfully, this friend is the most organised person I have ever met. She does not forget. So, a few days after our conversation, I had the recipe in my hand for what was to become my favourite cookie recipe to date.

So, dear friends, here is the recipe, being passed on, just as it should be. I love that my growing recipe collection isn't made up simply of beautiful books stuffed full of recipes written by somebody else, but consists of recipes from here, there and everywhere. From family and friends, and family of friends, and websites lovingly created by people who love to bake. Even as I write this, I am getting excited about the prospect of all the recipes that are to be found.

Enough of my jibber-jabbing, and onto the recipe...

Double Chocolate Cookies :: Makes about 22 {depending on how big /small you make them}

Ingredients
200g / 7oz dark chocolate
60g / 2oz unsalted butter
60g / 2oz white chocolate chips
225g / 8oz self raising flour
397g / 14oz tin condensed milk

1 :: Preheat the oven to gas mark 4 / 180C / 350F

2 :: Break up the dark chocolate and melt, along with the butter, in a glass bowl over a pan of simmering water.

3 :: Once melted, remove from the heat and stir in the entire can of condensed milk. Set aside for 10-15 mins to cool slightly.

4 :: Stir in the flour gradually (no need to sieve).

5 :: Stir in the white chocolate chips. On this occasion I cut up a bar of white chocolate as it was cheaper to buy it in this form than in ready-made chips, but roll with whatever you feel like. Personally, I think that little chips look better than cut up chocolate, but there we go.

6 :: Leave the dough to chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.
This was the first recipe that made me see that cookie dough really is, and should be, dough-like, just as the term suggests. It feels brilliantly springy to touch - not that you would ever catch me doing such a thing...

8 :: Spoon heaped teaspoons of the mixture onto a greased baking tray, leaving plenty of space in between to allow for spreading. If you want the cookies to have a smooth-ish appearance, it might be worth rolling the ball of dough in your hands before placing on the tray, but I quite like the rough-rocky-like apppearance they have from just scooping and pushing onto the tray.

9 :: Bake in the preheated oven for 10 - 12 minutes.
The cookies are ready when they're just starting to go crisp on top but are still very soft.
Remember that cookies always harden as they cool, so you do not want to bake them until they're hard, unless you want to bite into a brown rock!

Cake Count :: 501