Giant pain in the neck jam cookie

I'll say upfront that this giant jam cookie is delicious. And also that the biscuit dough is easy to whiz up in the food processor. But, other than that, it's just a big pain in the neck to make. 

I think the problem stems mainly from the fact that, when it comes to roll out the biscuit dough, it goes from fridge cold to a warm glue-like substance in the blink of an eye. Although I also have to mention the other significant challenge in this recipe, which is that the instructions have multiple descriptions of inverting dough onto trays and then re-inverting on to other trays and so on. Eventually I lost sense of whether we were left to bake two rounds of dough or two trays stuck together. 

This is not the recipe for the impatient, intolerant and generally irritable baker, but it will definitely suit those bakers who like nothing better than fiddling around with decorating biscuits or little cakes. And good luck to them.

For the most part I ignored the instructions and just tried to cut out two biscuit dough rounds and stick them together. Unfortunately the extremely sticky dough made it a less straightforward enterprise than I had hoped. The 'round' pictured below stuck unmercifully to the bowl I used to cut out the shape. Even a couple of sojourns in the freezer couldn't loosen the dough from its death grip on the bowl edge and eventually I had to scrape it off and stick it back together. 

I was a bit cannier when cutting out the second round and left the gladwrap on the top of the dough when I cut the shape. 

I could not have been more surprised when, after many trips to and from the freezer, I managed to get the two rounds stuck together and the little star shapes cut out and stuck on in the right place.

The biscuit dough was a very simple mix and not very sweet. I wasn't sure how it would taste but combined with the reduced berry jam it was just like a little jam tart (a sweet pastry with a jam filling). It's a really great combination of flavours and I'm wondering if you could make this into little tarts. It might be easier than struggling with the rounds. I was a bit impressed with the final product though... and that, my fellow bakers, is how you get sucked in.

Next week the Alpha Bakers are making the Araxi Lemon Cream Tart.

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Fudgy chocolate ice cream sandwiches

You can't fault a recipe for biscuits that are baked for the sole purpose of sandwiching ice cream. I mean, I still don't really get the bother of an ice cream sandwich. There's no question that they're delicious but you can get the same effect with the old dinner party favourite of homemade ice cream served with a nice (usually crunchy) biscuit or two. I suspect ice cream sandwiches might be more of a thing in the US. Here they're just something you can buy at the shops if for some inexplicable reason you don't feel like a Magnum.

Inexplicability aside these are easy and delicious biscuits to make, although there is a bit of messing around with cooling periods so the mixture firms up enough to form into a roll. They are my favourite black cocoa-y type of chocolate biscuits. They could even stand being a little less sweet. That may be because I used ice cream called 'chocolate obsession' to sandwich them together. Something with more contrast and less chocolatey bits, such as coffee or strawberry, might have brought out the more bitter cocoa taste I was looking for.

The biscuit dough was more the texture of cake dough before going in the fridge to firm up. And it was delicious (no salmonella worries here, that I know of...).

After firming up in the fridge the dough is cut up and rolled into four rolls. In my kitchen this entails getting chocolate smears on everything in a metre radius. And if you squish the roll enough it looks almost cylindrical.

I made a rather pathetic and lazy attempt to follow the 'put the dough in a cylinder' instruction. I found a plastic barrel from my biscuit maker thingy and put the dough in that to try and keep the circular shape in the freezer (even though it was a bit large). Actually it seemed to work. 

My biscuits were quite soft in texture once baked. I was expecting them to be crunchier. I also might have cut mine a bit thinly in the first batch so I might try them slightly thicker next batch. Lucky I have three more dough rolls in the freezer. Which is also bad because it's just willing me to pop to the shops for some more ice cream. Perhaps coffee this time?

Next week we're making something with gooseberries. Which is going to be interesting because they're not the easiest berries to track down. Barring some sort of shopping miracle, mine are going to be in a glass jar, I think.

Not Molasses Sugar Butter Cookies

Tempting as it was to title this post 'no yucky molasses', I resisted the urge. Well as far as the first sentence anyway. Needless to say there is no (yucky) molasses in my biscuits. When I think of molasses it's actually a fond association with the delicious and exotic sounding molasses taffy of Little House on the Prairie. However, as I discovered with the nasty molasses cakelets, fiction is sometimes exactly that. I have three-quarters of a bottle of the stuff languishing in the fridge, waiting for someone to take it off my hands.

Apart from clarifying the butter, this recipe is the epitome of quick and easy. There's not even any rolling out of the dough. And they turned out looking very nice. I'm not convinced my biscuits are quite cooked in the middle although I clarified the butter (which Rose says is the key to a squidgy but cooked middle). I haven't cooked the second batch so I might try baking them a bit longer at a lower heat.

I had a furry assistant while I was making these biscuits. I suspect the usually forbidden benchtop repose was a protest against the general topsy-turvy of the renovations. Cats aren't big fans of change, in general, and specifically not fans of moving their food bowl. 

The golden clarified butter is a lovely colour. I wonder if it should be darker but the solids were looking very dark brown and I couldn't bear to ruin all that butter. I'd put it on the stove and then unpacked multiple boxes of books and had a long phone conversation with my mother before it was anywhere near ready.

You can't tell by looking at the dough but it has quite a lot of spice in it. In fact the finished biscuits are quite gingerbread-like in flavour. 

Next week the Alpha Bakers are making Party-size Blueberry Crumble (or something along those lines).

A sandy star is born

Everything is better in a star shape. This is a universal truth. Actually when I was dipping the raw dough cut-outs of 'The Dutch' Pecan Sandies* in sugar and cinnamon, they resembled starfish more than stars. Which incidentally are pretty life-affirming themselves, in a blobby kind of way. 

And I don't know if it was all the influence of the shape but these biscuits really are stars. They're delicately crunchy, very sandy, nutty flavoured and perfumed with cinnamon and a mix of sugars. They got a thumbs up all round from my taste-testers. A definite hit.

I was busy telling my colleague that they weren't very difficult to make at all, and then I started to say, 'well except for the beurre noisette (that takes aaaages) and then mixing is quick but you need to leave it in the fridge, then roll it out, then refrigerate, then cut, then refrigerate, then dip....'. Hmmmm difficult really is a relative term. If you've ever made a 9-pages-of-instructions, behemoth cheesecake, cake and buttercream extravaganza then starry biscuits are somewhat of a doddle in comparison.

*I suspect biscuit marketers would have something to say about that name, it doesn't exactly roll off the page. 

I was wishing we had smellovision when I mixed the three sugars (white sugar, brown sugar and golden sugar) with vanilla essence, so you could all experience the aroma, which was unbelievably delicious. I spent the time while I was waiting for the brown butter to cool, hanging out next to the bowl of delicious sugary scents.

I actually made my biscuits with walnuts rather than pecans. I have a big bag (now slightly smaller) which I bought for another Alpha Baker project. Everything is going to be walnut until I get that thing finished. The nutty flavour was delicious so it seemed to be a happy substitution.

I had seen biscuits called 'sandies' before in North American recipes but I didn't know what they were exactly. There's no mystery once you taste one - they are gritty like a mouthful of sand except sweeter and tastier. The texture is intriguing if you haven't tried it before. I didn't have time to google but I'm wondering if they're related to the Spanish polverones which literally 'pulverise' when you bite into them? I always thought they were more shortbread-ish. Whatever they are, they taste great. Probably even if they're round.

Next week the Alpha Bakers are making Babka.

Posh Pie (it's chocolate)

I missed out on making the Baking Bible's Posh Pie with the Alpha Bakers last year. I wanted to try and catch up since it looked luscious and of course chocolatey. The Posh Pie is a chocolate tart with a biscuit crumb base, chocolate mousse filling and shiny cocoa glaze.

My pie didn't turn out looking all that posh but it certainly was shiny. A bit of bling can fix anything. The pie was very nice but I think I need to make it again to tweak a few things and get it right. It also took quite a lot of time and energy. I'm not sure this pie was, but maybe posh pie 2.0 would be worth it.

The biscuits. It's kind of unbelievable that anyone would be masochistic enough to make biscuits just to grind them into crumbs. But that's what I did. This could be my first and only time and not just because it goes against the grain to crush biscuits you've sweated over. I also found this biscuit dough quite difficult to deal with. It was very sticky and melted after very little time out of the fridge. I think I'd probably choose an easier chocolate butter biscuit if I did it again.

I thought I might have packed the biscuit crumb in too hard by the time I finished but it was so crumbly it seemed to be the only way to compact it. Next time I might cook the biscuits a little less so they're softer and thus make softer crumbs. Or just buy some nice chocolate biscuits.

I love this type of mousse-like filling, and prefer it to buttercream filling for cakes. It's rich but not as sweet generally. I'm not a fan of using gelatin usually but if you're not serving the cake or tart immediately (or you live in a hot climate) you probably do need to use it. I might try a bit less next time or use leaf gelatin which I think gives a softer, less jelly-like finish. 

I don't have any photos of making the glaze because it was late by the time I got to that point. It was easy to mix up and poured on with no trouble.

I took this tart to work. It was very difficult to get the base out of the bowl. By the time a few pieces had been hacked off for hungry workmates the tart looked a bit messy. Most seemed to like it although no one raved. One person said it was too rich. He's never getting another piece of cake.

I'm making the Pink Pearl Lady Cake this weekend which means I'm making fondant icing. This is something I'd never bother to try otherwise, but being part of the Alpha Baker's is all about trying out new things...and then complaining when they don't work out.

Rose's Chocolate Chip Cookies

I knew, when I read that these biscuits were on the Baking Bible 'quick and easy' list, that that probably wasn't true. For a start Rose calls them My Chocolate Chip Cookies. If they're Rose's specialty then there's going to be something extra good about them, right? Plus if you've been following the Alpha Bakers for a while you'll know that Rose just can't help herself but add in some fancy step. And I was right. Not only do you have to make beurre noisette (browned butter) you also have to skin walnuts - two baking tasks which require the baker to exercise the highest degree of zen.

I cut out one of the zen-requiring tasks by not including the walnuts which made this recipe pretty easy, although a mishap with the butter added some time and severely tested my patience. In the end I liked these biscuits but they didn't wow me. I really felt like I wanted to add more flour to these since they seemed a bit insubstantial for my taste. This has not stopped me 'sampling' quite a few of them 'to see if I like them'. Rose notes that if you leave the dough in the fridge for a day or two it will make the biscuits thinner and crispier. I quite like doughier biscuits and I needed to finish baking these on the weekend so I baked them after a few hours of cooling. They were crunchy on the day I made them but after a night in the fridge had gone a bit soft. Unfortunately with the heat and the insects you can't leave chocolate biscuits out of the fridge here.

I was making the Bread Bible Challah recipe while I clarified the butter for these biscuits (you have to do something else at the same time because it takes sooooo long). I was feeling pretty smug about my browned butter since I'd been very patient and let it slowly clarify and brown. Then the bowl slipped out of my hand and I spilled the majority of the butter down the bench and all over the floor, my feet and the kitchen rug. Not only did I have to scavenge more butter out of the freezer (due to unusually low stocks of unsalted butter in my fridge) I had to clean greasy butter off the bench, the cupboards, the floor, my thongs*, my feet and the kitchen rug. The second lot of butter was less 'browned' than the first since my patience had worn a little thin.

*these are shoes in Australia not underwear just in case you were wondering about my choice of baking attire.

Look Mum, no walnuts! Why would you sully chocolate with nuts, I ask you? I added a few more chocolate chips to compensate. The lack of walnuts removed the guilt I might have felt had I used the walnuts and not bothered skinning them (an awful job which I just might consider undertaking if the Queen was coming to tea, or Rose, for that matter*).

*You're welcome for tea anytime Rose.

The finished biscuit dough could only be described as a blob. It seemed unlikely that it would allow itself to be turned into biscuits. However I have seen the Miracle of the Fridge before, where mixes and doughs become something entirely different after a spell in the cold. One thing about cooking with Rose is that she pretty much never leads you astray; so when things are looking doubtful the possibilities are either a) it's going to turn out all right or b) you've mucked it up yourself (and need to take evasive action). I didn't think I'd made any mistakes this time so I wrapped up the blob and put it in the fridge not too worried about its future.

And hallelujah! little biscuits emerged from the blob. I cooked them for the full 12 minutes but I'm wondering if I could have baked them for a bit longer to maintain the crunch past day 1. I didn't have any complaints at work so I think you could call them a success.

Next week is a rest week for the Alpha Bakers (phew!). But if I'm feeling enthusiastic on the weekend I might try to catch up on the Renee Fleming Golden Chiffon cake which I missed out on making just before Christmas.

Splodgy Spritz Butter Cookies

My Alpha Baker project for this week, the Butter Spritz Cookies, came out looking very pretty if a little splodgy. I think the splodginess is due to the fact I should have refrigerated them before I baked them. I was lead astray from my hard-learnt Principles of Baking in High Heat and Humidity by the fact that these are so quick and easy to make and the dough is very well-behaved. 

Somehow this didn't dampen my enjoyment of these biscuits, both making and eating. The flavour is very nice, with a distinct almond taste, and the texture is soft with a slight crunch. If I was going to start a rating scale for Christmas biscuits (and why wouldn't I) these would be a 7 out of 10 for ease of baking and aesthetics, only losing marks for being a little plain in flavour (I enjoy the spice that comes with a lot of Christmas goodies but other may see plainness as a positive).

The only thing I wasn't too keen on for this recipe was the glace cherries which I grudgingly bought. I always pick them off but you do need some colour and shine to make the biscuits look a bit interesting (i.e. Christmassy). Happy days though, as I was strolling the aisles of the supermarket I spotted not one but two different types of jelly tots (one from the UK, one Australian version). I bought them both, a move which really heralds the start of my annual campaign of Christmas excess and general overkill. They do bring down the tone of the biscuits a bit (to something a bit more childish), but they taste a lot nicer that the cherries. Guess who's getting glace cherries in their stocking? (hello Mum).

Piping bag or ancient hand-me-down biscuit press? This is the type of big philosophical question we Alpha Bakers have to face week in, week out. And the answer is...biscuit press.

I tried the piping bag first (you can see the cute little test-biscuit below) but the biscuit came out so small and then my $2.99 piping bag started expelling dough from the sides, so I gave up. I got out a biscuit press which came from either my grandmother or great aunt, which I have never used.

The biscuit press took a little while to work out. You can't see too clearly in the photo but the biscuit closest to the camera is enormous with decreasing size as you move away around the baking sheet. I put these back in the dough pile and started again.

The first tray was pretty comical looking. Pressed too close to the tray, too far away from the tray, double press. I tried it all. But it was a lot of fun and the dough was very easy to deal with. I could have scooped them back in and started again but I wanted to see what shape the different models baked into. And how the different jelly tots held up in the oven.

*Phew* much more evenly sized. I started to get the hang of it. This is when I should have put them in the fridge.

The third tray - evenly sized with sparkles!

Now I'm off to the kitchen shop to see if I can find a modern biscuit press and a better piping bag.

Next week we're making Pumpkin Pecan Pie, which is what I said last week, but this week it's really true. See you then.

And Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends for Thursday!

The start of Christmas baking? Hazelnut praline cookies

The Alpha Bakers are making biscuits this week - Hazelnut Praline Cookies to be exact. I have to be honest, baking biscuits doesn't excite me too much unless it's directly associated with Christmas. (Because everything to do with Christmas is more fun.) I'm always happy to eat biscuits, of course. 

There's not a lot for me to complain about with these biscuits though. They were quick and easy to make as long as you don't fluff the toffee making (not this time) and factor in refrigerator time. Actually I find time required for cooling or rising often makes it easier to fit baking around the rest of my life.

It's impossible not to like biscuits which are made up of three quarters praline. I may have cooked the first batch a bit too long since I found them a little bit too dry. I have some more dough in the fridge so I'll try cooking the next biscuits for less than 15 minutes. I think shorter baking time would bring out the flavour of the praline more. And if I considered making these for Christmas I might go to the trouble of half dipping them in chocolate to really fancy them up.

I enjoyed this recipe also because I got to use one of my favourite kitchen equipment purchases for the year. (I keep meaning to do a round up post on all my new stuff - maybe at the end of the year I'll get to it.) Rose's penchant for minuscule measurements (2/18ths of a teaspoon anyone?) meant I was in need of extra measuring spoons. I found a set which measure amounts such as a tad, a smidgen and a pinch (1/16th) which I used for the salt in this recipe.

Oh, I didn't mention that you're meant to spend time boiling and skinning the large amount of hazelnuts in this recipe. If I had had to do that there would be a lot more complaining in this post. As it was I found some blanched hazelnuts at my local shop (luckily they don't realise I would be willing to pay almost any price for them). I managed to make a small amount of toffee without incident, to pour onto the toasted hazelnuts to make the praline. The praline was so delicious I ate a shameful amount of the unused portion with a spoon.

It was simple to mix the biscuit dough ingredients up to a wet paste, which firmed up in the fridge.

The biscuit dough was very forgiving, even in the heat (ha, bet you thought I wasn't going to mention the weather this week). I much prefer rolling little balls than rolling out dough and cutting shapes - it's so much less stressful. I also prefer it because I never weigh the individual balls of dough even though this is suggested by Rose. I like to think hell will freeze over before I find myself weighing tiny pieces of dough but I guess you never know what another year with Rose and the Alpha Bakers will bring.

Next week the Alpha Bakers are making Pumpkin Pecan Pie which is very timely for our US contingent celebrating Thanksgiving.

The most delicious strudelly biscuit

Do not wait. Do not think. Do not stop. Go straight home and make these. You may want to stop for some ice cream to eat with them but that's the only diversion you should make. These are seriously delicious (not really biscuits and not really strudel) and you do not want to miss out. If you've read my other posts you won't be surprised to learn I did NOT wait the recommended 6 hours after baking to try these. I don't think I even made the 6 minute mark. And I just kept on 'trying' them. Eventually I rushed some over to my neighbour, just so I could truthfully say I hadn't eaten them all myself.

These are the rather prosaically named (for Rose) Cookie Strudel from the Baking Bible. I'm not sure I would have chosen to bake them, if left to my own devices, because the picture doesn't do justice to the flavour (how could it?!) plus it's always a bit trying to make this kind of pastry in the heat. I love Rose's rugelach but they always end up looking like they fell out of the oven when I make them at Christmas. Of course I've learnt some new skills over the last (almost) year; in particular the benefits of refrigerating dough/biscuits at every stage to help combat the effects of the heat and humidity.

Actually you might be slightly misled by my 'do not stop' advice since you have to wait a number of hours for the pastry dough to firm up in the fridge before you can finish these. And if you live in a very warm climate like Darwin you need to refrigerate during the shaping and before the baking too.

You can see that my dough came out very wet. It looks like cake batter almost. It was quite tasty but not really rating highly on the delicious scale for raw dough. 

It was a miracle that (after overnight in the fridge) that wet dough was able to be rolled out (using plentiful amounts of flour) into a thin rectangle (with some emergency refrigeration in between).

The scant filling of walnuts, currants and cinnamon on top of apricot jam makes this a fairly cheap biscuit/dessert to make. 

Now that my workmates have discovered phylliscaroline there are no baking secrets anymore and I fear I may have to make a batch for them to avoid outrage and retribution for not sharing. I might need to make it double batch. Surely I couldn't eat a double batch myself before I got to work...?

Next week the Alpha Bakers are making (the long winded) Marble in Reverse with Custom Rose Blend Ganache Glaze.

Lemony jammie deliciousness

This week is all about lemony deliciousness with the Lemon Jammies biscuits from the Baking Bible. I missed these a few weeks ago when the Alpha Bakers tested them out but I was really keen to make them since I love lemony flavours. So it was lucky that a catch up week turned up while I still had all the lemons I bought but didn't get to use. 

And I wasn't disappointed. These biscuits are plain butter biscuits flavoured with lemon zest and stuck together with lemon curd. I can't stress how delicious these are - I loved them and so did my testers. I'll definitely be making these again. I wasn't even put off by the fiddlyness of cutting out and sticking together.

The recipe starts with two tablespoons of lemon zest - that took a whole lot of lemons.

There was a heavenly scent when I opened the food processor after whizzing the sugar and lemon zest together. The recipe is simple to make in the processor, you just add the butter to the sugar/zest mixture then pulse in the flour.

The dough straight out of the food processor is crumbly but is easily pressed together through the plastic wrap. This dough is up in the top ten for tasty raw doughs.

It really is good to divide the dough into smaller amounts and to roll it out slightly before you rest it in the fridge. That way the dough pieces are in the right shape for rolling later and you can control the temperature of the dough once you start rolling and cutting. Thanks Rose and my fellow Alpha Bakers for these tips.

I used a recipe for lemon curd from Stephanie Alexander's The Cook's Companion. Her recipes are very reliable and always delicious. The lemon curd was no exception. It looks orange in the photo although it was really a deep yellow - the egg yolks were very deep orange.

It's very satisfying to line the biscuits up neatly and it helps to check my rather cavalier shape cutting system. I was pretty happy that we're in the dry season now so the humidity is much lower. This makes the dough easier to deal with and the cook a lot happier, so biscuit making is much calmer all round. 

I used my Christmas biscuit cutter which has a removable middle cutter, so centring the round was not a problem. Happy days.

The advantage of making these after my fellow Alpha Bakers is that I can learn by their experiences. I decided to use a plain cut out for the middle which meant that there was minimal effort in lining up the biscuit shapes when sticking them together.

Some of them turned out slightly oval :) but it wasn't too noticeable and frankly lemon curd cures all ills, including slightly skew-whiff biscuit shapes.

Next week we're making Chocolate Oriolos.  mmmmmm chocolate...