Daring Bakers February: Tiramisu

Updated below!

Finally the deer eaters are back among the Daring Bakers after having missed both December's and January's challenges. This one was far too good to miss (and the rules won't let us anyway, not if we want to remain in the fabulous kitchen posse which is the Daring Bakers), because in February we are making one of our favorite desserts: Tiramisu.

The February 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen and Deeba of Passionate About Baking. They chose Tiramisu as the challenge for the month. Their challenge recipe is based on recipes from The Washington Post, Cordon Bleu at Home and Baking Obsession.

As I said, Tiramisu is not a stranger to our table. The one we usually make (from the modern Swedish classic cookbook Nya Annas Mat by Anna Bergenström) can be put together in half an hour, plus some chillin' time. But this being the Daring Bakers, there was of course a much more involved recipe, coming from Baltimore pastry chef Carminantonio Iannaccone. This tiramisu certainly isn't one you make in half an hour, and the challenge also required us to make the savoiardi biscuits and mascarpone cheese ourselves!


Savoiardi biscuits with their snowy dusting of confectioner's sugar.

Markus started the day before with making the mascarpone while I was in Stockholm celebrating my mom's birthday by having dinner at Berns Bistro - delicious breast of duck with puy lentils and truffle sauce - and watching the musical Hairspray - both highly recommended if you happen to be in Stockholm! Markus says that making mascarpone was quite easy; the problem was knowing when it was done - what is "a few clear whey streaks"? It's also important to use quadruple cheesecloths for straining- we only have two and Markus thinks some mascarpone got lost in the process. Apart from that - way (whey!) cool that we now can make our own mascarpone! It looked and tasted just right! I love discovering how you can make cheese on your own - we have mastered ricotta earlier, and next up is either mozzarella or paneer.

So, the next day - and here I have to confess that "next day" means today, as in posting day, as in yes, we waited with the challenge until the very last minute again - we made the savoiardi biscuits, the zabaglione and the pastry cream. No major problems with any of these, we had forgotten to buy marsala and were out of both port and amaretto so we had to substitute coffee in the zabaglione, and vanilla extract is virtually unheard of in Sweden so instead we exchanged some of the sugar in the zabaglione and the pastry cream with homemade vanilla sugar.

After the chilling, it was time to assemble. We decided to skip sweetening the espresso, as we (correctly) assumed that the Tiramisu would be sweet enough without that additional sugar. And rum extract in the coffee? We of course went for the real deal - Captain Morgan! Lacking a suitable dish, we made individual Tiramisus in cocktail glasses. Not very traditional, but quite pretty!



We're sorry, but you have to wait until tomorrow to get the answer to the most important question: how did it taste? It's past midnight here (so really I'm posting this late) and we don't really feel like Tiramisu for a midnight snack today. But we promise to update the post tomorrow with the verdict!

In the meanwhile, go visit the Daring Kitchen to see all the other Daring Bakers' creations! Thank you Aparna and Deeba for a really nice challenge!

Update!
Yes, yes it was good. Very good. Very very good. As in, great that we still have some left in the fridge. As in, too bad I'm going away to work in an other city this week and have to leave Markus with that bowl all to himself. (Yeah, we made some in a bowl as well, besides the two pretty cocktail glass ones which were mainly to get good photos.)
I was worried that the coffee flavour would have been too much, with coffee both in the cream and for dipping the savoiardi (and I like coffee) but it wasn't, it was very balanced. I'm sure it would have been even better with marsala though, and will definitely get a bottle for next time.
But. I don't know if the pastry cream, with the extra work that entailed, really added that much to the end result. Texture-wise it made the tiramisu fluffier, which is nice, but I'm not sure that it made much difference to the flavour.
Homemade mascarpone and savoiardi was definitely worth it though, and neither of those were difficult to make, so we'll do that in the future, but, I think, with our old tiramisu recipe. It uses raw eggs in the zabaglione which isn't a problem here in Sweden (yay for strict rules and salmonella testing) but which I know can be iffy elsewhere so I understand why a cooked zabaglione recipe was chosen for the challenge.
In sum, this was a great. We learned something. We were challenged. We got a really delicious result. We will do it again (at least parts of it). What more can you ask for? Thanks again Deeba and Aparna!

TIRAMISU

(Recipe source: Carminantonio's Tiramisu from The Washington Post, July 11 2007 )
This recipe makes 6 servings

Ingredients:
For the zabaglione:
2 large egg yolks
3 tablespoons sugar (50 g)
60 ml Marsala wine (or port or coffee)
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
½ tsp finely grated lemon zest

For the vanilla pastry cream:
55 g sugar
1 tbsp all purpose flour (8 g)
½ tsp finely grated lemon zest
½ tsp vanilla extract
1 large egg yolk
175 ml whole milk

For the whipped cream:
235 ml chilled heavy cream
55 g sugar
½ tsp vanilla extract

To assemble the tiramisu:
470 ml brewed espresso, warmed
1 tsp rum extract (optional)
110 g sugar
75 g mascarpone cheese
36 savoiardi/ladyfinger biscuits (you may use less)
2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder (30 g)

Method:
For the zabaglione:
Heat water in a double boiler. If you don’t have a double boiler, place a pot with about an inch of water in it on the stove. Place a heat-proof bowl in the pot making sure the bottom does not touch the water.
In a large mixing bowl (or stainless steel mixing bowl), mix together the egg yolks, sugar, the Marsala (or espresso/coffee), vanilla extract and lemon zest. Whisk together until the yolks are fully blended and the mixture looks smooth.
Transfer the mixture to the top of a double boiler or place your bowl over the pan/pot with simmering water. Cook the egg mixture over low heat, stirring constantly, for about 8 minutes or until it resembles thick custard. It may bubble a bit as it reaches that consistency.
Let cool to room temperature and transfer the zabaglione to a bowl. Cover and refrigerate at least 4 hours or overnight, until thoroughly chilled.

For the pastry cream:
Mix together the sugar, flour, lemon zest and vanilla extract in a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan. To this add the egg yolk and half the milk. Whisk until smooth.
Now place the saucepan over low heat and cook, stirring constantly to prevent the mixture from curdling.
Add the remaining milk a little at a time, still stirring constantly. After about 12 minutes the mixture will be thick, free of lumps and beginning to bubble. (If you have a few lumps, don’t worry. You can push the cream through a fine-mesh strainer.)
Transfer the pastry cream to a bowl and cool to room temperature. Cover with plastic film and refrigerate at least 4 hours or overnight, until thoroughly chilled.

For the whipped cream:
Combine the cream, sugar and vanilla extract in a mixing bowl. Beat with an electric hand mixer or immersion blender until the mixture holds stiff peaks. Set aside.

To assemble the tiramisu:
Have ready a rectangular serving dish (about 8" by 8" should do) or one of your choice.
Mix together the warm espresso, rum extract and sugar in a shallow dish, whisking to mix well. Set aside to cool.
In a large bowl, beat the mascarpone cheese with a spoon to break down the lumps and make it smooth. This will make it easier to fold. Add the prepared and chilled zabaglione and pastry cream, blending until just combined. Gently fold in the whipped cream. Set this cream mixture aside.

Now to start assembling the tiramisu.
Workings quickly, dip 12 of the ladyfingers in the sweetened espresso, about 1 second per side. They should be moist but not soggy. Immediately transfer each ladyfinger to the platter, placing them side by side in a single row. You may break a lady finger into two, if necessary, to ensure the base of your dish is completely covered.
Spoon one-third of the cream mixture on top of the ladyfingers, then use a rubber spatula or spreading knife to cover the top evenly, all the way to the edges.
Repeat to create 2 more layers, using 12 ladyfingers and the cream mixture for each layer. Clean any spilled cream mixture; cover carefully with plastic wrap and refrigerate the tiramisu overnight.
To serve, carefully remove the plastic wrap and sprinkle the tiramisu with cocoa powder using a fine-mesh strainer or decorate as you please. Cut into individual portions and serve.

MASCARPONE CHEESE

(Source: Vera’s Recipe for Homemade Mascarpone Cheese)
This recipe makes 12oz/ 340gm of mascarpone cheese

Ingredients:
500 ml whipping (36 %) pasteurized (not ultra-pasteurized), preferably organic cream (between 25% to 36% cream will do)
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice

Method:

Bring 1 inch of water to a boil in a wide skillet. Reduce the heat to medium-low so the water is barely simmering. Pour the cream into a medium heat-resistant bowl, then place the bowl into the skillet. Heat the cream, stirring often, to 190 F. If you do not have a thermometer, wait until small bubbles keep trying to push up to the surface.
It will take about 15 minutes of delicate heating. Add the lemon juice and continue heating the mixture, stirring gently, until the cream curdles. Do not expect the same action as you see during ricotta cheese making. All that the whipping cream will do is become thicker, like a well-done crème anglaise. It will cover a back of your wooden spoon thickly. You will see just a few clear whey streaks when you stir. Remove the bowl from the water and let cool for about 20 minutes. Meanwhile, line a sieve with four layers of dampened cheesecloth and set it over a bowl. Transfer the mixture into the lined sieve. Do not squeeze the cheese in the cheesecloth or press on its surface (be patient, it will firm up after refrigeration time). Once cooled completely, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate (in the sieve) overnight or up to 24 hours.
Vera’s notes: The first time I made mascarpone I had all doubts if it’d been cooked enough, because of its custard-like texture. Have no fear, it will firm up beautifully in the fridge, and will yet remain lusciously creamy.
Keep refrigerated and use within 3 to 4 days.

LADYFINGERS/ SAVOIARDI BISCUITS
(Source: Recipe from Cordon Bleu At Home)
This recipe makes approximately 24 big ladyfingers or 45 small (2 1/2" to 3" long) ladyfingers.

Ingredients:
3 eggs, separated
75 g granulated sugar
95 g cake flour, sifted (or all purpose flour with 2 tbsp cornstarch)
50 g confectioner's sugar

Method:

Preheat your oven to 175°C, then lightly brush 2 baking sheets with oil or softened butter and line with parchment paper.
Beat the egg whites using a hand held electric mixer until stiff peaks form. Gradually add granulate sugar and continue beating until the egg whites become stiff again, glossy and smooth.
In a small bowl, beat the egg yolks lightly with a fork and fold them into the meringue, using a wooden spoon. Sift the flour over this mixture and fold gently until just mixed. It is important to fold very gently and not overdo the folding. Otherwise the batter would deflate and lose volume resulting in ladyfingers which are flat and not spongy.
Fit a pastry bag with a plain tip (or just snip the end off; you could also use a Ziploc bag) and fill with the batter. Pipe the batter into 5" long and 3/4" wide strips leaving about 1" space in between the strips.
Sprinkle half the confectioner's sugar over the ladyfingers and wait for 5 minutes. The sugar will pearl or look wet and glisten. Now sprinkle the remaining sugar. This helps to give the ladyfingers their characteristic crispness.
Hold the parchment paper in place with your thumb and lift one side of the baking sheet and gently tap it on the work surface to remove excess sprinkled sugar.
Bake the ladyfingers for 10 minutes, then rotate the sheets and bake for another 5 minutes or so until the puff up, turn lightly golden brown and are still soft.
Allow them to cool slightly on the sheets for about 5 minutes and then remove the ladyfingers from the baking sheet with a metal spatula while still hot, and cool on a rack.
Store them in an airtight container till required. They should keep for 2 to 3 weeks.

Daring Bakers October: A tale of two macaron recipes

The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.

We have made macarons quite a few times before, but were nevertheless excited when learning about this month's Daring Bakers' challenge. I mean, a) macarons are delicious; b) the possibilities for creativity are endless; and c) it's always fun to try out a new recipe.

The first time we made macarons, we used a recipe from Tartelette. The result wasn't bad for first-timers, but they weren't perfect. The next time, we tried the recipe from our guru for all things sweet, Jan Hedh in his book Passion för Desserter (Passion for Desserts). That's the recipe we have used since, and it has yielded some really good results, and we have even been a bit daring with it.

But what's a good macaron like? Before starting to make them ourselves, we had never had a macaron, so in reality we didn't really know how they're supposed to be in order to be perfect. But a few weeks ago, we got the answer, and it was given to us by no other than the famed Pierre Hermé. Markus went to Paris for a work conference, and "skipped class" to go to Hermé's store and pick up a box of assorted macarons. Unfortunately they got a bit compromised by traveling, so they didn't look perfect, but the taste... oh dear god, how delicious! There was 12 different flavors (two of each!), all delicious. Markus liked the champagne one best, I fell in love with the olive oil and vanilla (sounds weird, but the flavor was so delicate), and we both let out a big sigh of pleasure when biting into the fleur de sel caramel. We didn't take any pictures, but if you want to see what Pierre Hermé's macarons are like you can take a look at this post on Nook & Pantry. We had quite a few of the flavors described there.

So now we know what a perfect macaron is like. Would Claudia Fleming's recipe lead us to that holy grail of pastry making?

It's sometimes hard to stop yourself when coming up with macaron flavors but we limited ourselves to two, probably quite original, flavors: Gingerbread & Blue Cheese macarons and Tiramisu macarons.

By coincidence, we started with the gingerbread macarons. We could tell that there was trouble afoot when we were making them - the proportions seemed kind of odd, and the macaronage (the batter) did not behave the expected way when Markus piped it. Also, the temperatures and baking times seemed a bit strange. In the private forum of the Daring Bakers, I found that Clumbsy Cookie shared my apprehensions about temperatures and timings. As Clumbsy is a lady who knows her way around the sweet stuff, I followed her adjustment of times and temp's, and baked for 6-7 minutes at 170°C and then for three more minutes at 150°C.

Aaaaaand... fail!



These aren't macarons, people. They were, however, very tasty - kind of a chewy meringue cookie. Actually, they were so tasty that I forgot to take a picture of them with the filling before eating them all!

We still had the batch of tiramisu macarons to make, and we agreed that we didn't want to waste more ingredients and time on a recipe that could fail us again. You see, we make our own almond flour for macarons, a time-consuming process which involves:

1. blanching almonds
2. peeling them
3. drying the peeled almonds in the oven for about 1 hour at low temperature (100°C)
4. letting them cool
5. grinding them in our very efficient but kind of small almond mill
6. sifting the almond meal to make sure it's very fine
   

Our awesome almond mill. Thanks grandma!

Yes, I realize the truly daring thing would have been to give Claudia Fleming's recipe another go, but instead we decided to use Jan Hedh's recipe for the second kind of macarons, and figure out what the differences between them are.

So, here's the macarons we made using Jan Hedh's recipe. They're not perfect (we think the most perfect macarons we've made are the lavender ones which can be found in this post), but they're like a 1000 percent better than the above pictured fiasco!



So, what's the differences between the two recipes?

1. Proportions of ingredients: See the interactive recipe scaler below. In short, the largest difference is the amount of sugar, where Jan Hedh's recipe calls for much more per egg.
   
2. Drying before baking: Hedh's recipe calls for drying the piped out shells at room temperature for 15-30 minutes before baking them.
3. Baking time and temperature: The official recipe called for 93°C for 5 minutes, followed by 190°C for 7–8 minutes while Jan Hedh called for 7–8 minutes in 170°C.
   

To make the ingredient comparison more clear, Markus made an interactive ingredient scaling Javascripty thingy (fingers crossed, and hope it's working).

The official recipe

5		Egg Whites
225	g	Confectioner's Sugar
190	g	Almond Flour
25	g	Sugar

Jan Hedh's recipe

100	g	Egg White
200	g	Confectioner's Sugar
100	g	Almond Flour
30	g	Sugar
5	g	Lemon Juice

Now, let's talk about flavors!

Gingerbread & Blue Cheese macarons
Gingerbread and blue cheese may sound like a weird combination, but a slice of blue cheese on top of a Swedish gingerbread cookie (pepparkaka) is a very popular treat in Sweden during advent and Christmas, often served with a glass of hot glögg. We flavored the shells with four teaspoons gingerbread spice mix (ginger, cinnamon, cloves and cardamom), which gave a perfect gingerbread taste to the shells, and made a blue cheese cream for filling. These were really tasty, and we'll definitely make them again for the holiday season - actually they were so good that we made a second batch, using the Jan Hedh recipe. After all, we still had some filling left.



Blue cheese filling
140 g firm blue cheese (we use Swedish Kvibille Ädel, similar to Danish blue cheese)
75 g whipped cream

Mix the cheese and the whipped cream. The way to get a uniform, smooth cheese cream is to cut the cheese into smaller pieces and chuck them in the freezer the day before. Then you give the frozen cheese a good whirl in a food processor until you have very fine cheese crumbles. Mix them with the whipped cream. Smear between two gingerbread macaron shells.

Tiramisu macarons
Tiramisu is one of our favorite desserts: savoiardi (ladyfinger) biscuits dipped in coffee and layered with an Amaretto flavored mascarpone zabayone. We made coffee flavored macaron shells, and used the mascarpone zabayone for filling. We were out of Amaretto, but since macarons already are almond flavored, it didn't really matter. However, we added a bit too much coffee powder to the macaron shells - we used 1½ teaspoon, but really one teaspoon would have been enough. Apart from that, these were good. We had planned to dust the shells with some cacao powder before baking them (tiramisu is decorated with a dusting of cacao), but we forgot. Instead, we dusted some cacao over the filling before sandwiching the cookies together.



Mascarpone zabayone
1 egg, divided
2½ tbsp sugar
100 g mascarpone cheese

Whip the egg white to stiff peaks. Whip the sugar and egg yolk until the mixture is light and airy. Stir in the mascarpone. Fold in the egg whites carefully. Place in the fridge so that the mixture sets before filling the macaron shells. If you like, you can dust a little bit of cacao powder over the filling.

Thank you Ami for this challenge! Even though we didn't succeed with the Claudia Fleming recipe, we had fun making this. Make sure to visit the Daring Kitchen for recipes, pictures and lots of other good stuff, and pay a visit to other Daring Bakers through the blogroll!

The best cheese and cracker!

You know those flavor combinations that are totally unexpected but just knocks you off your feet? This is one of those. I even had to make a new label category for this: perfect pairings. We can't take credit for it though; it comes from the Swedish food magazine Allt Om Mat (we've subscribed for something like five years, and keep every issue. Nothing we've ever made from it has turned out bad).

So, what's this perfect pairing then? It's a biscotti-like biscuit with almonds, vanilla, sesame seeds and anise, that you serve with strawberry-apple jam and a slice of chèvre (goat's cheese). The combination of flavors and textures is spot on. The biscuit is crunchy and sweet, but not overly so, and you can definitely taste both the sesame seeds, the anise and the vanilla. Together with the salty, creamy chèvre and the sweet strawberry jam with a slight tang from the apples, this is perfect matchmaking of flavors.

Markus made a batch of the strawberry-apple jam this summer when fresh strawberries were cheap and in abundance. I never got around to making the biscuits then, but I decided that it was time now, before we run out of jam (it's also great with freshly baked scones).

Like most biscotti recipes I have come across, the dough has a tendency to crumble and fall apart (I remember being nearly in tears trying to make lavender biscotti with a particularly unccoperative dough). Instead of rolling the dough out, you might find it easier to sort of squeeze-shape it into long sausage-shaped rolls.

Sesame biscuits with chèvre and strawberry-apple jam



Sesame Biscuits

makes about 40

1 dl almonds
100 g butter, at room temperature
½ dl sugar
1 tsp vanilla sugar
2 tsp ground anise
2 eggs
5 dl flour
1½ tsp baking powder
½ dl sesame seeds (black or white)

Set the oven to 175°C.
Chop the almonds.
Mix butter, sugar, vanilla sugar and anise. Add the eggs, one at the time, and mix them in well.
Mix the flour and the baking powder and add to the batter.
Last, add the sesame seeds and chopped almonds.
Shape the dough into two rolls, about 40 cm long. Place them on a parchment covered baking sheet and flat them out slightly with your hand.
Bake for 20 minutes, remove them from the oven and let cool. Lower the oven temperature to 150°C. Cut the rolls, slightly diagonal to make the biscuits larger, into slices about 1½ cm thick. Lay them down so that the cut surface is up. Put them back in the oven and let them dry for about 25 minutes. Let them cool on a wire rack.

Strawberry-Apple Jam

makes about 4 dl

1 apple
200 g fresh strawberries
1 tbsp water
½ tbsp lemon juice
3 dl jelling sugar*

Peel and core the apple and cut it into small cubes. Cut the strawberries into smaller pieces.
Put apple, strawberries, water and lemon juice in a pan, bring to a boil and let it boil for five minutes. Add the jelling sugar, bring to a boil again and boil for three more minutes.
Pour the jam into a clean jar, let it cool and store in the fridge.

*jelling sugar (syltsocker in Swedish) is sugar with added pectine, citric acid and potassium sorbate.

To assemble: Put a slice of chèvre on a biscuit, and top with a spoonful of jam. Devour!

3x macarons

No, not triple x macarons (what on earth would those be like?) but three kinds of macarons for my triple x birthday! That's triple x as in Roman numerals - get your mind out of the gutter! :)

Yeah, the big day was Saturday, and I requested three kinds of macarons for the celebration with the parents. The flavors I came up with was an autumn-y apple-cinnamon-caramel, a sophisticated lavender-vanilla, and a fresh raspberry-lime.



Apple-Cinnamon-Caramel macarons
These are made by adding cinnamon to a normal almond shell recipe, and are filled with a combination of apple compote and caramel sauce. They taste like apple pie, with a slight burnt sugar note from the caramel.

Cinnamon macaron shells
100 g egg whites
30 g sugar
100 g ground almonds
200 g confectioner's sugar
dash of lemon juice
2 tsp cinnamon (heaped)

Sift the ground almonds and confectioner's sugar into a large bowl. Add the cinnamon and mix well. Whip the egg whites and lemon juice to a foam, add the sugar and whip it to a soft meringue. Fold the meringue into the dry mixture without overworking it. Pipe small rounds on a parchment covered baking sheet (use a round tip). Let them sit for at least 30 minutes before baking at 175°C for 7–8 minutes.

Apple compote
500 g apples
100 g sugar
20 g lemon juice (20 ml)
1 small cinnamon stick

Peel the apples and remove the cores. Slice them thinly and put in a pan together with sugar, lemon juice and a cinnamon stick. Boil on low heat until you have a thick compote. Let it cool completely. Remove the cinnamon stick, and use a mixer or an immersion blender to turn the compote into a smooth puree.

Caramel sauce
120 g sugar
1 tsp lemon Juice
300 g cream

Melt the sugar and lemon juice in a pan until you have a light brown caramel. Add the cream little by little and boil until the caramel is dissolved. Let it cool, transfer to an airtight container and store in the fridge. The sauce will thicken as it cools.

Assembly
Mix equal parts of apple compote and caramel sauce. Taste to see if you want more apple flavor, or more caramel. Spread the apple-caramel filling between the cinnamon macaron shells.



Lavender-Vanilla macarons
These are lavender flavored shells filled with French vanilla buttercream. The idea was to make them a soft, blueish color - like in the Swedish flag macarons - but we had forgotten how much food coloring to use... So: if you pour in one teaspoon of liquid blue food coloring, you will get these very bright, kind of turquoise colored macarons. Not what we aimed for, but at least the taste was delicious. Besides the somewhat in-your-face coloring, these were the macarons that ended up looking the best. Nice uniform size, perfect "feet", no "peaks".

Lavender macaron shells
Use the recipe above, but instead of cinnamon you add half a tablespoon of dried lavender. Bash the flowers up using a mortar and pestle before adding them to the almond-sugar mix. If you want to use blue food coloring to get a lavender-colored cookie (or a bright turquoise one!), you should add it while whipping the egg whites. (Note! That is if you use liquid food coloring - I have no experience using powders, but visit Tartelette for professional guidance.)

French vanilla buttercream
80 g egg yolks (about 4)
½ vanilla bean
60 g water (60 ml)
125 g sugar
250 g unsalter butter, at room temperature.

Whip the egg yolks until they are light colored and airy.
Split the vanilla bean, scrape out the seeds and put them in a small pan. Add water and sugar, and bring to a boil. Use a wet pastry brush to brush down the sides of the pan, this will remove any sugar crystals that have stuck there. Boil until a sugar thermometer reads 117°C.
Add the sugar mixture to the egg yolks, while whisking constantly.
Continue whisking until the mixture is cool. Add the butter little by little, and whisk until the buttercream is light and airy. The buttercream can be frozen.



Raspberry-Lime macarons
Here I want to quote the lady with the most mouth-watering blog of the pastry blogosphere, Tartelette. She has this to say about flavoring macaron shells:

One of the trickiest thing to do with macarons is to flavor the shells without messing up the texture. Adding liquid to the batter is to me like jumping off a plane wishing your parachute is going to work properly.

Our parachute didn't work this time. Adding liquid has worked for us before, but this time, we got a visit from Murphy when trying to make raspberry flavored macarons using raspberry puree. The macarons ended up misshapen, and had a very unmacarony texture - more like a fluffy meringue. At least the flavor was great; they really taste of raspberries and despite their sad look I kind of fell in love with their girly pink color (helped by a drop or two of red food coloring).

I won't give you the recipe since they need to be perfected. For the lime curd, see this recipe for lemon curd, but use the zest of two limes and lime juice instead.


From top to bottom: good macaron, bad macaron, good macaron, bad macaron!

Feeling coco-nutty

One of the joys of working from home is that you can dig around in the pantry to find something to snack on, come across a bag of coconut flakes, realize that coconut-lemon cookies would be great right about now, and then you can make them!!! And they don't require a long cookie-making break either, 'cause these sweeties come together like a breeze. They remind me of the Caribbean, which feels nice now, when summer is making a last effort outside while I'm stuck indoors in front of the computer. And the smell of coconut, lemon and butter makes for a pretty nice working environment!



Coconut-lemon cookies

makes about 25 cookies

75 g butter
2 eggs
1 dl sugar
250 g coconut flakes
1 lemon (lime works too)

Melt the butter and let it cool. Mix together the eggs and sugar. Zest and juice the lemon. Add the cooled butter, coconut flakes, lemon zest and juice to the egg-sugar mix. Let the mixture stand for about 10 minutes. Drop spoonfuls of batter onto a parchment-clad cookies sheet; use your fingers to push it together in little heaps. Bake at 150°C for about 25 minutes; they should have a light golden color. Let the cookies cool on a wire rack.

Daring cookie monsters!

This month's Daring Bakers challenge was done in the very last minute - on the day of the reveal (i.e. today). Fortunately, the challenge this month wasn't too time-consuming:

The July Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Nicole at Sweet Tooth. She chose Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies and Milan Cookies from pastry chef Gale Gand of the Food Network.

Yum! Both these cookies are versions of store-bought cookies, Mallows and Peppridge Farm's Milano Cookies. I've never had Mallows, but we both like Milanos. The challenge said that we could do both cookies, or chose just one recipe. Due to lack of time time we had to limit ourselves to one of the recipes, and chose the easiest one, the Milans. I was really looking forward to making my own marshallows, but alas, that has to wait for another time.

The Milan cookies were easy to make (and the batter was delicious!). We halved the recipe and omitted the vanilla extract as that is hard to find in Sweden (we get vanilla sugar and whole vanilla pods/beans, but normal grocery stores don't sell extract). We also didn't find any lemon extract, only "lemon aroma" which is oil-based, so we reduced the amount to one teaspoon.

The Milans turned out great - they are light and delicate, and taste very close to the original. Thanks Nicole for a tasty challenge!

Here's the recipe for the Milan cookies - for the recipe for chocolate covered marshmallow cookies, go to the Daring Kitchen recipe archive or to the Food Network.

Milan Cookies
Recipe courtesy Gale Gand, from Food Network website

Prep Time: 20 min
Inactive Prep Time: 0 min
Cook Time: 1 hr 0 min
Serves: about 3 dozen cookies

• 12 tablespoons (170grams/ 6 oz) unsalted butter, softened
• 2 1/2 cups (312.5 grams/ 11.02 oz) powdered sugar
• 7/8 cup egg whites (from about 6 eggs)
• 2 tablespoons vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons lemon extract
• 1 1/2 cups (187.5grams/ 6.61 oz) all purpose flour
• Cookie filling, recipe follows

Cookie filling:
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 8 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped
• 1 orange, zested

1. In a mixer with paddle attachment cream the butter and the sugar.
2. Add the egg whites gradually and then mix in the vanilla and lemon extracts.
3. Add the flour and mix until just well mixed.
4. With a small (1/4-inch) plain tip, pipe 1-inch sections of batter onto a parchment-lined sheet pan, spacing them 2 inches apart as they spread.
5. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 10 minutes or until light golden brown around the edges. Let cool on the pan.
6. While waiting for the cookies to cool, in a small saucepan over medium flame, scald cream.
7. Pour hot cream over chocolate in a bowl, whisk to melt chocolate, add zest and blend well.
8. Set aside to cool (the mixture will thicken as it cools).
9. Spread a thin amount of the filling onto the flat side of a cookie while the filling is still soft and press the flat side of a second cookie on top.
10. Repeat with the remainder of the cookies.

---

Previously completed challenges:
February 2009: Chocolate Valentino
March 2009: Lasagne of Emiglia-Romana
April 2009: Cheesecake
May 2009: Strudel
June 2009: Bakewell Tart...er...pudding

Bananaramacarons

Due to a recent, not yet blogged about, food event we discovered that you can actually grind banana chips and use them in cooking. As so often happens to us of late, we started wondering if there might be a way to use this knowledge to pervert macarons, and it turns out there is! This one, like the snickerons, is based on already available candy. At least in Sweden we have these banana shaped thingies (about as big as my pinkie), tasting like banana marshmallows covered in chocolate, called “skumbananer”, which means foam bananas. Now, the easy way to make these would be to make chocolate macaron shells and some banana flavored filling, but then we wouldn't use the banana chips, so we did it the other way around instead! Granted, macaron shells made of banana chips is a bit experimental, but since we decided to blog about it, it either turned out fine, or spectacularly failed. Either way it's worth reading the rest of the post, right? :-)

So, for the shells, we decided to substitute some of the almonds for banana chips, it ended up being about 70 % of the almonds that were substituted, giving a recipe along these lines:

200 g Confectioner's Sugar
100 g Egg whites
30 g Sugar
30 g Almonds
70 g Banana chips

Scold and grind the almonds, grind the banana chips, and mix the two in a large bowl with the confectioner's sugar. Whip the egg whites and sugar into a light meringue (soft peaks), and fold it all together. Don't over work it! Use a plain tip pastry bag to make small rounds on parchment covered baking sheets and let them sit for at least 30 minutes before baking at 175°C for 7 minutes.

Let the shells cool before prying them off the baking sheets.

Now, having made the macaron shells is really only half the story, but I wont give you any recipe for chocolate creme here, just use whatever you like. Any ganache will work like a charm. Jenny made a plain dark chocolate one (cream and dark chocolate, period) for me to fill these ones with. As you can see from the pictures, it's a bit runny, but will probably stiffen up after one more day in the fridge.

So far so good, now for the $10k question: will it fly? Certainly not, but metaphorically speaking it might make you take off if you're really into that whole foam banana taste. It's really weird, but the banana chips make the shells more airy and lighter, like foam. I know we sort of had this in mind, but we didn't really expect it to work this well... ah well, you take the good with the rest! Fingers crossed they'll even make it through the freezer. Which they did (I'm writing this post anachronistically, the beauties in the pictures have actually been frozen and then thawed)!



Just a note on pronunciation of the title: it's obviously a contraction of Bananarama (a band which is incidentally as old as Jenny, alluding to the flavors involved) and macarons, but how should it be pronounced? There's two possibilities: bananarama-carons or bananara-macarons, and I personally prefer the first one. Don't know what “carons” are, but this way they at least taste good!

No-bake cookies

Sorry about the very scarce posting lately. It will probably go on this way for much of the summer - I'm going to be away from home a lot, so unless Markus whips up stuff for himself in the kitchen while I'm gone, the blog won't be updated very regularly.

We're having a heat wave in Sweden at the moment, and spending time in the kitchen hasn't been too appealing, apart from opening the fridge to get fresh strawberries. Or one of these cookies!

I found them at Munchkin Munchies, a fellow Daring Baker. They're perfect for summer since they are super quick, require no baking, and are made from stuff you probably already have in the kitchen (well, okay, maybe not too many Swedes have peanut butter at home). It's not a sophisticated "grown-up" cookie, but one you sneak out in the kitchen to munch down together with a glass of cold milk. Peanut butter, cocoa, the caramel-taste of butter and sugar, and crunchy oats - yum!

Sue of Munchkin Munchies tells us it's an old family recipe. Sue has framed the recipe that her mom wrote down for her, and has it framed, hanging in the kitchen. I think that's very sweet!



Cocoa Oatmeal Cookies
From Munchkin Munchies

In a mixing bowl put:
3 cups oats
½ cup peanut butter
1 tsp vanilla (I left this out since we didn't have any)
Pinch of salt

In a saucepan put:
½ cup butter
2 cups granulated sugar
3 heaping tablespoons cocoa (Sue says she and her mom uses Nestlé Quik. I used quite dark organic cacao powder which gives a more intense and less sweet chocolate flavour)
½ cup of milk

Bring the mixture in the saucepan to a full rolling bowl, and boil for one minute and ten seconds. Too little boiling makes it too gooey, too much makes it too firm. Immediately pour the hot mixture into the dry ingredients and mix well. Drop by spoonfuls onto wax paper (Sue's instructions) or into small paper cups (that's how I did it). Refrigerate until firm.

I halved the recipe and got 12 cookies.

Swedish flag macarons

So, this was an idea we had for our equivalent of Independence Day, which it technically is: the modern day Kingdom of Sweden was founded on June 6th 1523. Having been an independent nation for almost 500 years, it's somewhat taken for granted nowadays... but since it's been a day of historical importance throughout the years, other noteworthy events have been scheduled for this date, such as the 1809 Instrument of Government, which provided legislative power to parliament and freedom of expression and press. June 6th is sometime called “Day of the Flag” here, so in honor of that, we decided to make macarons in the colors of the Swedish flag. Now how do you get macarons to be blue and yellow? And what's this post doing long before June 6th?

None of us is going to be home for June 6th, so we decided to skip the date, and just make blue and yellow macarons (I'll be on a conference in Boulder, Colorado May 31st–June 7th if anyone happens to be in the neighborhood).

Now, blue and yellow macarons, preferably with a Swedish connection... As you've perhaps noted, I make a killer lemon curd that's excellent for filling, and which is also yellow. So, how to make blue shells? Why, flavor them with bilberries! Bilberries are called “blåbär” in Swedish, which literally translates into “blue berries”. There's endless confusion between blueberries and bilberries, but both are more or less blue... probably have to help the shells with some coloring though...

For the lemon curd, see this recipe. And for the bilberry macaron shells you need:

200 g Confectioner's Sugar
100 g Almonds
100 g Egg Blues
1 tsp Lemon Juice
30 g Sugar
1 dl Frozen Bilberries
Liquid Blue Food Coloring

Wait a minute, egg blues? What's that? Well, basically blue egg whites... and in anticipation of future genetic improvements of domesticated birds, we have to rely on egg whites and liquid food coloring. It's hard to give exact measurements of how much food coloring is needed, but the before and after pictures below gives a hint of what to aim for.

So, to make the shells, start by making the bilberry jam. Heat the berries in a pan, they will start to disintegrate and leak, which is fine, we're aiming for something jam-like here. Let them reduce for a while, and then cool. Purée the bilberries through a strainer to get rid of the peels. Since the shells are teeming with sugar anyway, we opted to make the jam altogether sweetener-free.

Grind the almonds to a flour. We have a purpose-built mill, but a food processor might work as well, or maybe you can get almond flour at your local store? Mix the almond flour with sifted confectioner's sugar in a large bowl.

Whip the egg blues and lemon juice. Add the sugar and whip it to a meringue. Fold in the bilberries.


Egg blue meringue in the making

Fold the meringue into the almond mix without over-working it. Use a plain tip pastry bag to squeeze out small rounds on parchment covered baking sheets. Let them sit at room temperature for at least ½ hour before baking for 7–8 minutes at 175°C. Let the shells cool before removing from the parchment. The shells keep well in the freezer, but won't make it more than about a day in room temperature. To assemble, just put some lemon curd between two equally sized shells.

In hindsight, we probably should have gone for more bilberries and less food coloring, but there might be a June 6th next year as well...


Swedish flag macarons

Snickerons

After a recent fit of innovation it dawned on me that if you could make pistachio macarons, you probably could use other kinds of nuts, and as peanuts aren't really nuts they should work as well (there's no logic there, just creative thinking). Since it's possible to make peanut macarons (by creative inference), and also chocolate ones, you could take one of each shell and stick caramel cream between them and have something that's kinda like a snickers bar. The natural name for this thing would of course be “snickerons” – hence the title of this post. I sincerely hope we do not offend the French nation by blatantly dragging the crown of French pastry mastering into the cheap filth of American mass consumerism. I mean, that's what we're doing, we're just hoping no one takes offense... :-)

So, the three components needed are peanut and chocolate macaron shells and caramel cream.

Macaron shells
100 g Egg whites
30 g Sugar
100 g Ground Almonds
200 g Confectioner's Sugar
dash of Lemon Juice

Mix the ground almonds and confectioner's sugar in a large bowl. Whip the egg whites and lemon juice to a foam, add the sugar and whip it to a soft meringue. Fold the meringue into the dry mixture without overworking it. Pipe small rounds on a parchment covered baking sheet (use a round tip). Let them sit for at least 30 minutes before baking at 175°C for 7–8 minutes.

Chocolate macaron shells
Substitute 20 g of confectioner's sugar with 20 g powdered cocoa. Add a light touch of green food coloring to get a more chocolaty color to the finished shells.

Peanut macaron shells
Substitute half of the almonds with peanuts. Make sure they're roasted and unsalted. The only ones I could get that matched those criterion were unpeeled Raffles style peanuts (the Long bar at Raffles Hotel is home to the Singapore Sling, and the shells of the complimentary peanuts are supposed to be discarded on the floor – colonially decadent and barbaric, but fun), which makes for some gruesome peeling... the things we do for treats!


Peanut macaron shells fresh out off the oven

Caramel cream
120 g Sugar
1 tsp Lemon Juice
300 g Cream

Melt the sugar and lemon juice in a pan. Add the cream little by little and let it absorb. When all the cream is in the pan, give it a quick boil up and then strain it into something that you can cover up and put in the fridge. Cover up and put into the fridge. :-)

Assembly
Put some caramel cream between two different kinds of shells. Enjoy!


The finished snickerons

It actually worked. They taste somewhat like a snickers bar, only better. I think it needs more peanut though, so I'll try adding some salt in between (to lift the peanut flavor), or add some chopped regular (roasted and salted) peanuts. I guess the salt could have been added to the caramel cream, that would probably have worked out beautiful.

Another thing about following fits of inspiration is that you rarely stop to think things through, which I've had time to do now, and I really don't know why I made two shells... could've just made chocolate flavored peanut shells and caramel cream.

Guess that's the next iteration of this insanity: salt caramel cream and chocolate flavored peanut macaron shells. Or do you need almonds to call it macarons? Never mind – we're calling them snickerons anyway!

Macarons for Dad

Having worked up a taste for macarons in this post, a follow up was destined to come sooner or later. The perfect opportunity turned out to be dad's birthday. He's got pretty much everything he needs, and is somewhat of a sucker for sweets, so as far as presents go it should work like a charm. Besides, parents are supposed to appreciate anything their kids (even those above the age of 30) make for them, so no matter how it turns out I'm safe.. right? :-)

I decided to make pistachio macarons, and somewhat unorthodoxly fill them with lemon curd. This time, the two recipes are from Jan Hedh's Passion för Desserter (‘Passion for Desserts’, sometimes Swedish is remarkable easy to rewrite into English...) Compared to last time, the biggest difference is baking time and heat.

I think they turned out much better than last time, but I've only ever tasted macarons I made myself, so I don't know if I'm much of a judge on the matter. Judging from online sources, it does however seem to me that these are closer to what the blogosphere considers good macarons.

Here are some pictures, recipes are further down. It's a pity I have to hold this post until they're delivered... :-/


Good lining, right amount of curd...


Fairly smooth surface, nice color (although not very reminiscent of pistachios)

Pistachio Macarons
200 g Confectioner's Sugar
50 g Almond
50 g Pistachios
100 g Egg Whites (if they've been sitting out in the fridge for a few days that's even better)
1 tsp Lemon Juice
30 g Sugar

Ground the nuts into a flour. Preheat the oven to 170°C. Mix the nut flour and the confectioner's sugar in a bowl. Whisk the egg whites and the lemon juice in anther bowl. Add the sugar and beat it into a meringue. Fold in the dry stuff, don't over-work it. Use a plain tipped pastry bag to make 2–3 cm rounds on parchment covered baking sheets. Let them sit out for 15–30 minutes before baking for 7–8 minutes. Let them cool.

Lemon Curd
1 sheet Gelatin
3 Eggs
150 g Sugar
75 g Lemon Juice
zest from 1 ½ Lemon
100 g Unsalted Butter

Let the gelatin soak in cold water. Whip the egg and half of the sugar fluffy. Bring the rest of the sugar, the butter, the lemon juice and the lemon zest to a boil. Pour the lemon mix over the egg mix while whisking. Mix thoroughly. Pour everything back into the pot and bring it carefully to a near boil experience. Keep whisking all along. Take it off the heat and whisk it smooth. Squeeze the gelatin and let it dissolve in the curd. Strain it into a plastic container and cool quickly in a cold bath. Let it sit in the fridge for a while to harden.

Monday Macaron Madness

Do you know what a good activity at 9.30 pm on a Monday evening is? We do: it's making macarons for the first time! Crazy? Guess it fits us then... :-)

We figured we'd start off easy and try a plain almond macaron with dark chocolate ganache for filling. So, we need a chocolate ganache and some macarons! Here's how we made them:

Chocolate ganache
125 g Cream
100 g Dark chocolate (70%)
20 g Honey
1 tbsp Havana Club Añejo Especial (Cuban rum)

Chop the chocolate finely (go ahead, be as masochistic as me and do it by hand, or use a mixer). Add the rum to the chocolate. Mix the cream and the honey in a pot and bring it to a near-boil experience. Pour the cream mixture over the chocolate and fold it together. Let it stabilize in the fridge.

Macarons
We basically ripped one of Tartelette's excellent recipes. Although it originally called for pistachios we just substituted them for even more almonds.

90 g Egg Whites (about 3)
30 g Sugar
200 g Confectioner's Sugar
110 g Almonds

Mix the confectioner's sugar and almonds to a fine powder. Whisk the egg whites and add the sugar gradually until a meringue is formed. Fold in the almond/sugar powder until the whole batter has a “magma-like” consistency. Use a pastry bag with a plain tip to pipe 2 cm rounds on a parchment covered baking sheet (or two in our case). Let them sit and harden for 30–60 minutes before baking them in 130°C for 20 minutes (or longer if you made them bigger). Actually, make it longer and make them bigger, that's what Tartelette (a.k.a. The Macaron Queen of the Blogosphere) does... Let them cool before assembly. Supposedly, they survive well in the freezer, and two baking sheets of macarons is quite alot if you're not having guests over. We'll have to get back to you about that though, we're definetly shoving some of them in the freezer before assembly.

Assembly
Just put them back-to-back with some filling in between! Oh, and enjoy with a glass of milk – it goes great with the sweet and chocolaty macarons!


Mmm, this looks yummy...


...let's move in for a closer look!

Also, having made macarons we feel that there should be some sort of rite of passage into a new stage of our blogospheric career, so if anyone knows of a graphic or something to proclaim that we are “amateur food bloggers with macaron capabilities,” please comment!

French meringue

Since I got some egg whites left over from another thing I did (coming up later), I thought I might as well do what I always tell my self I ought to do whenever I make something with egg yolks: meringue. All you really need is egg-whites and sugar (and some lemon juice) so it should be easy, right? Yeah, theoretically at least...

The recipe I used is straight from Jan Hedh's book “Desserter” (you just know you can trust a baker that looks like him!). So for this you need:

100 g egg whites (refrigerator cold)
1 tsp squeezed lemon
100 g sugar
100 g confectioner's sugar

Heat the oven to 150ºC. Whisk the egg whites and lemon juice until it starts to get fluffy. Add 50 g of sugar and continue whisking (use medium speed if you're using a mixer). Add the rest of the sugar and speed up to full speed. Whisk until it becomes a firm meringue fluff. Stop whisking and sift in the confectioner's sugar. Toss it to a smooth fluff with a dough scraper. Use a pastry bag or just dish it out on a baking sheet. Bake for 10 minutes, then lower the temperature to 100ºC and bake for another 1½ hours. Don't keep the oven completely closed. You can also sprinkle a fine cover of confectioner's sugar on top just before baking, it's supposed to make them even crispier.

They're supposed to keep for several weeks if kept in a air tight box. I'll have to get back to you about that, or, maybe they wont survive long enough...


Freshly baked French meringue tops... yummy!

Seven cookies week day 6*: Maple syrup cookies with pine nuts

Part 1: Is there failure baking in my oven?
I'm usually good at following directions and keeping two thoughts in my head simultaneously. Yeah, apparently not today. I'm using another recipe from Winnie the Pooh's Cookie Book, just like yesterday, and reading through the ingredient list I realized I didn't have enough butter. Well no worries, I thought, I'll just halve it. So I halved the butter. Then I saw that these cookies had brown sugar, white sugar, syrup (molasses) and maple syrup in them. Ok, I'll omit the white sugar and up the brown sugar just a little to make them not super super sweet but just super sweet. So I did. I blended it all together, into a nice creamy sugary syrupy goodness. And realized that I had forgotten to halve the ingredients. So right now I have cookies with half the amount of butter, but regular amounts of the other ingredients (well, besides white sugar), baking in my oven. Oh, and no raisins or all-spice either. They smell very nice though, and the dough seemed okay, so I'm hoping for the best here. I really want to get better at kitchen chemistry. I know my way around flavors and I'm comfortable with exotic ingredients and difficult preparations, but I can't figure out what will happen with a cookie dough that has half the prescribed amount of butter in it. Okay, timer's going off now, need to get these freaks out of the oven.

Part 2: The verdict
So, the first batch are out. They do look very nice and normal. Is it all apperance though? Time to take a bite... *nam nam munch munch*...damn, these are good! Warm, sugary spicy flavor and the pine nuts giving a sofisticated toasted note. Not a failure at all, my friends. Okay, I'll give you my very tweaked recipe. But today you'll just have to do without my masterpiece photos, cause the battery in our camera has completely given up.

Maple syrup cookies with pine nuts

Makes about 30 cookies

125 grams butter
3/4 cup dark brown sugar
1/4 cup light syrup
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 egg
2 cups flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 ½ tsp ground ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
3/4 cup pine nuts
Pinch of salt

Cream the butter and brown sugar together. Add the syrups and the egg, mixing thoroughly. Mix the flour with the baking soda and spices and stir that in well. Add the pine nuts and the salt. Drop by spoonfuls on parchment covered cookie sheets. Bake at 190 degrees C for about 12 minutes.

*Yeah, I'm one day behind with posting on this. Deal with it.

Seven cookies week day 5: Banana spice cookies

This post was of course supposed to go up yesterday, but sometimes life gets in the way. Anyhoo, bananas in cooking. I know some people can't stand it, but me, I'm quite a fan. But it has to be real and good bananas, banana flavored stuff (ice cream, candy etc) is usually vile. Not to mention banana liqueur, yuck! But give me banana nut bread, or home made banana ice cream with a good chocolate sauce, and I'm a happy camper.

I do hate over ripe bananas though. Actually, I guess I don't like ripe bananas. If I am to eat them as is, then they have to be a little on the green side. However, when I lived in Venezuela, I had really ripe bananas, the tiny kind, right of the stem, and they were lovely! So maybe it has to do with how they ripen: on the banana stem in the sun, versus in the grocery store or my kitchen.

We got bananas in our organic fruit and veggie box that I told you about the other day, and yesterday I realized the two ones left were too ripe to eat. When I started browsing websites and cookbooks for a recipe for the fifth day of seven cookies week, I came across a recipe for banana spice cookies. Perfect timing! The recipe is from Winnie the Pooh's Cookie Book, another gift from my wonderful American host family who knew that I don't only love baking, I also love Winnie the Pooh. The original, not the fake Disney version.

Although there are plenty of cakes out there with bananas as an ingredient, I had never come across them in a cookie before, so I was intrigued. These cookies were a breeze to make, and they do taste very nice. The flavor is similar to banana nut bread, but much more delicate, and the consistency is very light and moist. Next time I will probably up the spices though, cause I think they would be even better with a little more punch from the cloves and cinnamon. The book says to decorate with powdered sugar or cream cheese frosting but I don't know about that, it would probably be too sweet for my taste. I could, however, see these drizzled with just a little bit of melted good dark chocolate. Hm, maybe something to try...

I've made a few very minor changes to the recipe. If you need to converse the cups into deciliters and the like, look here.



Banana spice cookies

Makes about 35 cookies

100 grams butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract (I used the seeds from about 2 cm of a vanilla pod)
2 1/4 cups flour
½ tsp cinnamon
3 ground cloves (I grounded them myself; if you use already ground ones, take 1/8 tsp)
1/4 tsp baking soda
2 big bananas
70 grams chopped walnuts

Set the oven to 175 degrees C. Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and vanilla. Mix the flour, spices and baking soda and add that to the butter mixture. Mash the bananas. Add them and the walnuts, and mix well. Using a spoon, drop the batter onto parchment covered cookie sheets. Bake for 8-12 minutes until the edges are lightly brown (note: these cookies are very pale). The cookies will set when they cool.

Seven cookies week day 4: Chocolate crinkles

Today I have tried an all new recipe and not made any major changes, besides halving it, because I didn't want to get too many cookies. Let's say I get an avarage of 20 cookies out of each day this week. That times seven is 140 cookies - that's a helluva lot of cookies people.

I had never heard about chocolate crinkles before, but when I read about them I immediately got interested. Soft gooey fudgy chocolate cookies? That I gotta make!

Please use a really good chocolate for this recipe, don't be cheap with the sugary fake stuff. You really should use a dark chocolate (or bittersweet or whatever it's called where you are), cause otherwise I think these cookies will be overwhelmingly sweet.



Chocolate crinkles (Recipe from Joy of Baking.com)

Makes about 20 cookies

25 grams butter
100 grams dark chocolate (I used one with 70 % cacao)
1/4 cup (50 grams) sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract (I used the seeds from about 3 cm of a vanilla pod instead)
3/4 cup (105 grams) flour
Pinch of salt
1/4 tsp baking powder
Confectioners sugar for topping

Place the butter and chocolate in a stainless steel bowl and place the bowl over a pan of simmering water. When it has melted, stir and set aside. Beat the egg and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla and then the chocolate mixture. Mix the dry ingredients and add them. Stir until just combined. Cover the bowl with plastic and place in the freezer to set for a couple of hours or overnight, until the dough is firm enough to shape in to balls. Put the confectioners sugar in a shallow bowl. Using your hands, roll a small amount of the chilled dough into a small ball with a diameter of about 2,5 centimeters (1 inch). Then roll the ball in the confectioners sugar until it is completely covered. Place the cookie balls on parchment covered baking sheets, about 5 cm apart. Bake in the center of the oven at 175 degrees C for 8-10 minutes until the edges are set but the insides still soft. Overbaking will turn the cookies dry. Eat these with a cold glass of milk and a smile on your face!

Seven cookies week day 3: Oatmeal cookies with pumpkin seeds and apricots

One of my favorite cookies is oatmeal-raisin. I love the texture, how it's both crunchy and chewy at the same time, and the warm spicy flavors of brown sugar and cinnamon. But since this week is about trying out new stuff, I thought "why not give that old classic a new twist?". Yeah, I know I said this week would be about trying out new recipes, but updating an old favorite surely counts as something new, right?

The basic recipe for this comes from The Perfect Recipe Baking Book by Murray Jaffe. I got it for Christmas from my hostfamily the year that I did a high school exchange year in the States - they knew my love of baking and they sure knew that I fell in love - too much in love - with those tasty American treats. Thanks to this baking book (which only downside is the lack of pictures) I can make all the classics: New York cheesecake, Boston cream pies, corn muffins, banana nut bread... *cue Homer Simpson drooling noices*

So, in my updated version for the very tasty oatmeal raisin cookie, I added some more crunch by switching some of the oats for pumkin seeds. I also used dried apricots instead of raisins. The result? Well, at least as good as the original. The pumpkin seeds adds a nice toasted flavor and the apricots are not as overwhelmingly sweet as raisins can be. They are still sweet, but in a more subtle and sophisticated way.

You could also make the argument that these cookies are healthier than other ones - there's some fibers and good fats - but I won't. It's cookies we're talking about. If I want healthy I'll eat an orange.

I'm sorry about some of the measurements being in cups. I have my own American measuring cups so I don't have to convert, but if you do, here's a handy conversion guide.



Oatmeal cookies with pumpkin seeds and dried apricots

Makes about 30 cookies

100 grams butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 large egg
3/4 cup flour
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp cinnamon
A pinch of nutmeg
A pinch of salt
1 cup rolled oats (not the quick cooking kind)
½ cup pumpkin seeds
½ cup dried apricots (about 10 pcs)

Mix the butter and sugar together until the mixture is smooth and light. Add the egg. Blend the flour, baking soda and spices together and add that to the mixture. It should just blend together, do not overwork it. Stir in the oats and pumpkin seeds. Cut the dried apricots in smaller raisin-sized pieces, and add them.
Use a spoon to deposit the dough on to parchment covered cookie sheets, leaving space for spreading in between. Flatten them slightly with your fingers and make them round-ish in shape so that they will bake evenly.
Bake in a 175 C oven for 12-15 minutes until they look set. They will still be a bit soft when you get them out, but sets when they cool.

Seven cookies week day 2: Pistachio Clementine Biscotti

Second day of seven day cookie week! I felt kind of crap today and was afraid that this project would fail right at the beginning, but after dinner (carrot and ginger coconut soup, sorry no recipe today) I got some new energy and got baking. The original plan was to make some kind of American cookie in honor of this historical and totally awesome day, but none of the ideas I toyed around with appealed to me, so instead I decided to make biscotti. Maybe that makes sense though, now that we've got a person in the White House who probably can pronounce the word biscotti (and nuclear!) and doesn't think that only terrorist-hugging commies would eat them elitist European cookies. Ok, I totally digress. Sorry.

As far as I know, biscotti are traditionally flavored with hazelnuts, almonds, orange peel/juice and Amaretto (almond liqueur). But they can be flavored with basically anything - chocolate, dried fruits, coffee, berries - I have even seen recipes for salty ones (meant as snack food with a cocktail) that I will try out some day. The idea for this flavor combination comes from a whole other recipe at Tartelette (which I am totally in awe of - divine recipes that has me drooling by the computer, photographies which makes me want to lick the screen and some to die for pastry making skills. Go look for yourselves.). I thought the flavor combination clementine (or satsuma/mandarin) and pistachio would work in a biscotti. And it did!

However, two minor things. First of all, I should have used more pistachios and skipped the almonds, because the pistachios weren't that noticable. Second, I should have used the zest from another clementine, because when you take a bite of the biscotti and get a piece that has a piece of zest in it, then you really get a taste this cookies potential. So if you decide to make this you might want to add that to the recipe.

This should make about 50 biscotti, but every time I seem to end up with loads more. I probably make mine much smaller than intended.



Pistachio Clementine Biscotti (Adapted from Annas Mat by Anna Bergenström)

100 grams pistachios
50 grams almonds
100 grams butter
3 eggs (medium sized)
2 ½ dl sugar
6 dl flour
1 tsp baking powder, brim-full
1 clementine (or satsuma/mandarin), zest and juice

Chop the pistachios and almonds coarsely. Melt the butter and set aside to cool slightly. Beat the eggs and the sugar together until the mixture is white and very fluffy. Stir in the butter. Add the zest and juice from the clementine and then the nuts and almonds. Mix in the flour and baking powder, and work into a dough. Pour some flour on your baking board (or other work area), tip out the dough and work it together quickly. It may seem sticky at first, but will come together beatifully after a while. Divide into four equal parts, and form each part to a long roll (not so long that it won't fit your baking sheet though - I already made that mistake for you). Place on a parchment covered baking sheet. Flatten the rolls out with your hand; you want them to be quite flat. Bake for 20-25 minutes in a 200 C oven. Let them cool for about five minutes, and then cut them diagonally, about 2 cm wide. Place them with the cut surface up. Dry them in a 75 C oven for about an hour. If kept in an airtight container away from light and heat they will keep for quite a long time.