Macadamia Nut Choco Chip Cookie

This cookie recipe had been in my to-do list for the longest time. Finally I had the chance and baked this for Teachers' Day. So I baked this and packed them up for dd and ds J to bring to school for their Teachers' Day celebration.

Ingredients:

250 g salted butter, soften
1 cup caster sugar (225 g)
1/2 cup brown sugar (90 g)
3 nos. medium size eggs, beaten
2 tbsp Irish Cream Bailey's
340 g plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate soda
300 g macadamia nuts, chopped
300 g chocochips

Method:

Cream butter and sugars together till you get a light and fluffy texture.

Add in the eggs, Bailey's, bicarbonate soda and flour in three portions.

Add in the chocolate chips and chopped nuts and stir till well mixed.

Refridgerate the dough for about an hour before distributing them on the baking sheets.

Drop 1 teaspoonful of the dough onto a lined cookie sheet and bake them in a pre-heated oven at 180 degree C for about 10-12 minutes or till they become a golden brown.

Cool the cookies on a cooling rack thoroughly before storing them in an air tight container.

Cookies can be kept for about a week without refrigeration or for about two weeks with refrigeration.

Butterfly Cookies

Baked and decorated these butterfly cookies for dd's classmates to celebrate Easter. The recipe was gotten from the Straits Times shared by Sylvia Kang for Mind Your Body. The recipe is true to what the article suggested .... High in flavour, low in sugar :-)

Ingredients:

100 g unsalted butter, soften
50 g icing sugar
150 g plain flour
100 g corn flour
2 pinches of salt
orange zest, finely chopped
lemon zest, finely chopped
6 tbsp UHT milk

Method:

Pre-heat oven to 175 degree C.
Cream butter and icing sugar together till light and creamy.
Fold in the rest of the ingredients and mix well till a dough is formed.
Cling wrapped the dough and place in the fridge for about an hour.
Roll the dough out between two pieces of cling wrap to about 3 mm thin with a rolling pin.
Cut out the desired butterfly shapes and place them on the silicon paper lining the cookie sheets.
Bake them for about 20 minutes.
Cool the cookies completely before decorating them with colored icing.

Colored Icing for decorating cookies.

1 no. egg white, lightly beaten
1 1/2 cups icing sugar
1 to 2 tsp lemon juice

Stir all the above ingredients till well blended.
Divide the icing into different portions and add in a drop of food coloring.

Lavender Cookies Galore

This year I got orders from my dear brother for sixteen bottles of Lavender Cookies. I had no idea how much baking I needed to do. On top of this order I also had to do my own baking for family and friends. My small table top oven could only bake twelve cookies at a go. After many, many hours and also many kilograms of flour, sugar, butter, eggs, milk and lavender flowers I realised the life of a home baker with a small oven is really tough work LOL. Up till this point, I still have not completed my baking yet ...haiz.
Well to look on the positive side, I still have another weekend to complete the baking and then I'll rest for the rest of the year till near Christmas LOL

Lavender Cookies

My first introduction to dried lavender flowers was when I read about a fellow blogger baked cookies using them. I had a chance to purchase these dried flowers at Shermay's cooking school and they were expensive. I paid almost $10 for a packet of 20 g dried lavender flowers for cooking and baking. I searched the internet for a simple drop cookie recipe using these precious flowers and baked them.

Presenting the final product here. See the precious flower peering from just the cookie surface. The flowers are tiny but they really gave a lovely fragrance while the cookies were baking and after which the fragrance lingered on in the container where the cookies were kept. The recipe gave a soft and chewy cookie and the lavender fragrance gave a new experience to eating them.

Here is also sharing the website to know how to use these lovely dried lavender flowers.

http://whatscookingamerica.net/Lavender.htm

Here's is the recipe I used ....

Ingredients:
2 tsp dried lavender flowers
2 cups AP flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
125 g salted butter, soften
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg, beaten
2 tbsp evaporated milk
1 tbsp Irish Cream Bailey

Method:

Pre-heat oven at 180 degree C
Sieve together baking powder and flour.

Whisk butter and sugar together till fluffy.

Add in the beaten egg, Irish Cream Bailey and milk.

Add in the dried lavender flowers and stir well.

Add in the flour and stir till well combined.

Drop tsps of cookie dough onto cookie sheets lined with baking mat.

Decorate with quinns.

Bake for 10-15 mins or till cookie turn a golden brown.

Cool completely on a wire rack before storing in an air-tight container.

Cornflakes / Rolled Oats Cookies

My family and my parents loved them to bits.. I managed to find the time to bake these last weekend. The recipe was adapted from Kitchencapers contributed by Gina here. Thanks Gina for sharing the recipe.

Rolled Oats Cookies

Cornflakes Cookies

Here's how I did mine .....

Ingredients:

180 g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
125 ml sunflower oil
90 g caster sugar
1 beaten egg
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 cup cornflakes or rolled oats
a couple of tbsp of milk to bind the ingredients if you still find it dry.

Method:

Sift flour, baking powder and soda together.
Mix in the sugar, cornflakes or rolled oats till well mixed.
Add in the oil, essence, beaten egg and milk and stir till a dough is formed.
Use a cookie scoop or spoon to form balls and place them on cookie trays.
Bake in a pre-heated oven of 180 degree C for 15 mins. or till cookie turns a golden brown.
Remove and cool on wire rack completely.
Store in air-tight container.

Quinns in Chocochip Cookies

These cookies are for Children's Day Celebration in dd's school and also in church. As I have no more mini M&Ms left, I used these quinns to decorate them. I actually got the idea from a blog that I usually frequent and thanks to E who posted her pic there. The quinns on the cookie make the cookie rather attractive. At least the color didn't bleed into the cookie surface like the mini M&Ms that I usually used. And ds said that they also gave the cookie a crunchy bite .

Tower of Macarons

I first tasted macarons at a gathering. This is now the rage of French bakes ...
It is soft and chewy and very sweet. What I have here is what they call the shell and usually they are eaten with some kind of filling in between two shells. The filling is usually a ganache or some cream or even ice- cream. If you like this macaron, I suppose you'll love eating it and if you don't, you'll not even touch it.
My ds J didn't mind eating it and he ate quite a number of freshly baked shells. My ds B , after tasting one, didn't want to touch them again. I sandwiched two shells with some left over pink buttercream and they tasted quite good. I also sandwiched another with the chocolate ganache and this tasted too sweet.
On the whole, the macaron shells were actually much too sweet for my liking.

The recipe for making this is HERE.

Valentino Laksa Cookies

I named them such cos' it's Valentine's Day today! I read about the recipe from the Sunday times and was wondering how the cookies would taste.
Yochana from IK beat me to baking this and posted it at IK. I'm glad she did that cos' she feedback and said that the cookies are nice to taste.
But being the lazy me and always looking for shortcuts, I went on to buy the dry laksa pre-mix instead of making the paste from scratch. I got the Hai's Laksa pre-mix and worked on the cookie dough :-)


Click HERE for the link to the cookie recipe and the discussion.

Hazelnut Crisps

I like this cookie. I adapted it from the Cashewnut Crisps recipe which I got from a baking website. I adjusted the recipe a little and substituted ground cashewnuts with ground hazelnuts.

Ingredients:

250 gm unsalted butter, soften
150 gm caster sugar
2 egg yolks (egg whites reserve for glazing)
300 gm Top flour
20 gm corn flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tbsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla essence
60 gm ground hazelnuts
chocolate chips for decorating

Method:

Sieve together top flour, corn flour, baking powder and baking soda.

Cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy.

Add in the egg yolks and vanilla essence and mix well.

Add in the ground hazelnuts mix well and then followed by the sieved flour mixture.

Mix till a dough is formed.

Put soft dough in a piping bag with a fluted tip and pipe the rosette pattern out on the lined baking sheets. Leave enough space for the crisps to expand.

Brush the top with egg white and decorate with a chocolate chip.

Bake in a pre-heated oven of 170 degree C for about 20 mins. or till rosettes are lightly golden brown.

Cool the crisps completely before storing them.

Hazelnut Snow Cookie

I bought a packet of grounded hazelnut and made this cookie using butter and brown sugar. The result was a not too sweet cookie which I believe my dad would love to eat. I sprinkled some snow powder thinking that I could make the cookie sweeter but it doesn't seem to work that way. Snow powder has only a hint of sweetness and it is not like icing sugar which is very sweet.

Ingredients:

250 gm unsalted butter
100 gm brown sugar
400 gm Top flour
80 gm ground hazelnut
2 eggs
red chelory for topping

Method:

Cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy.

Add in egg and blend well.

Stir in the grounded hazelnut and flour and mix till a dough is formed.

Put the soft dough in a piping bag and pipe the cookies out.

Egg wash the cookie top and place a chelory for decoration.

Bake in a pre-heated oven at 180 degree C for 20 mins. or till cookie turns a light golden colour.

When cookie is done and is still warm, sprinkle some snow powder on it.

Cool cookie completely before storing in an air-tight container.

Peanut Cookie 2

My family didn't like the first batch of peanut cookies that I made. I added too much oil and they didn't like the crunchy peanuts in the cookie. However they like the Suji cookie recipe. So, I used the Suji cookie recipe and just substituted the grounded almonds for grounded peanuts. And yes, they fell in love with this. This cookie crumbles in your mouth.

Sugi Cookies

Finally managed to bake this and I must say the recipe is really easy to do. Just need to measure out the ingredients and mix all together and then shape the cookies into a ball. Even dd had a ball of a time helping me shape the cookies :-)
Dh who is not a cookie person also did the taste test and said that it was good.

Click HERE for the recipe. It's actually from a Phoon Huat Demo Class.

Superbiscuit Mix Cookies

I bought the Superbiscuit Mix from Phoon Huat and used it to bake some assorted cut out cookies. The pre-mix has flour, sugar, baking powder and milk powder and flavouring in it. The instructions were very simple. You just need to add soften butter to the flour and mix into a dough. Half way doing it I realised it's difficult to bind the dough without some liquid and the taste of the dough was rather bland. So I added some Bailey , honey and milk. The dough managed to bind and it was easy working with the dough to cut out the cookies.

Finally cookies baked and dd did the taste test. She looked at the cookies and was so happy cos' the cookies were decorated with her favourite ingredient Hundreds and Thousands. After a bite on the cookie she spat it out and refused to eat it anymore. Wondering why, I took a bite myself and realised the cookie had only a very faint taste of sweetness in the dough and it's rather powdery.

To look on the positive side, I would say that it's a good cookie for you if you wanna loose some weight or if you're diabetic. The taste and texture takes some time getting used to.

This morning I ate them again. I think I'm getting used to the less sweet cookie taste. I saw ds J putting nutella on the cookies before popping them into his mouth.

Fig Cookies

Dh bought me some packs of nuts and figs to snack on. He thinks these are better than eating cookies. Figs are good for weight control but definitely not when they are in these cookies. Click HERE for some information of the Iranian figs that I used to make these cookies.

I searched the internet and came up with this simple and easy to do drop fig cookie. The Fig Cookie recipe is obtained HERE .
Presenting my final product ....it's a soft cookie with chewy figs to taste.

Chocochip Cookies Encore

Another batch of chocochips cookies done. This time the texture is the crunchy and chewy type. Here's sharing with you how I adapted the recipe.

Ingredients:

125 gm unsalted butter, softened
1 tbsp Irish Cream Bailey
3 tbsp brown sugar
1/2 cup condensed milk
1 tbsp cocoa powder
1 cup chocochips
2 cups self-raising flour (300 g)
2 tbsp evaporated milk
1/4 tsp salt

Method:

Cream butter and sugar and salt till well combined.

Add in the condensed milk, Bailey's and cocoa powder and mix well.

Fold in the flour and the chocochips and add in the 2 tbsp milk.

Scoop out teaspoons of the cookie dough and place on a lined baking sheet.

Decorate the top of the dough with M&M baking bits.

Bake in a pre-heated oven of 170 degree C for 10 mins.

Cool cookies completely before storing them in air-tight containers.

Recipe makes 70 pieces of cookies.

Chocochip Cookies Again!

Stefanie shared this RECIPE with us at Imperial Kitchen and I took time to bake it and never looked back. It was also my first time using condensed milk for the cookie dough and it definitely gave a different texture to the usually hard and crunchy chocochips cookies that I baked.

My children loved it and the cookie is the soft and chewy type. I also added a tablespoon of Irish Creme Bailey into the cookie dough and about 1/2 cup milk to the dough to bind the ingredients better. For the children's chocolate chip, I decorated them with M&M's baking bits. Using another batch of dough I added orange peel and decorated them with red diced cherries. I will definitely bake this recipe a few more times.

Peanut Cookies

As CNY is approaching, there was a discussion at Imperial K itchen regarding what cookies to bake and Jo kindly shared her recipe with us. Click HERE for the original recipe. This peanut cookie is pretty easy to make, however I added too much oil to mine and this resulted in my cookies having problem shaping into rounded balls. This cookie is the melt in the mouth type of cookie.

...And here comes the GINGERBREAD MEN

I managed to find a gingerbread cookie recipe that my family likes to eat and it's easy to do. It's actually hard work to roll out the dough and cut-out the gingerbread man one by one. I prefer to eat those without the icing sugar. The recipe is from Ellena's blog .
Please click HERE for the original recipe.

Here's my gingerbread men without their clothes.

Here they are with their icing clothes.

Creamcheese Cookies

I've baked this cookie recipe quite a number of times and the children love it. It's a soft cookie but the raw cookie dough is a challenge to handle. I made the first batch using the X'mas tree cookie cutter and decorated the cookies with m&m's baking bits, red sugar crystals, red and green diced cherries. These decorations indeed make the cookie X'mas trees colorful. For the second batch, I just scoop a tsp of dough and hand rolled them. Then I pressed the round dough down with a cookie press pattern plate and decorated it with m&m's baking bits.


I adapted the recipe from the Kraftsfood website.

Ingredients:
250 gm Cream cheese (1 packet), softened
200 gm Salted butter, softened
160 gm Caster sugar
320 gm Plain flour
1 tsp Baking soda
2 tsp Vanilla essence
1 packet M&M's Baking bits
Red sugar crystals for sprinkling

Method:
Pre-heat oven to 180 degree C.

Beat softened cream cheese, butter, sugar and vanilla essence till well blended.

Add in the flour and baking powder and mix well till a soft sough forms.

Cling wrap the dough and refrigerate it for about 30 mins.

Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface and use cookie cutters to cut out the flattened dough.

Decorate with M&M's baking bits and sugar sprinkles.

Place all decorated cut out cookies on greased baking sheets ( I used the silicon paper mat).

Bake for 15 mins of until the cookie browns.

Remove from tray and cool.

Keep cookies in air-tight containers.

Carefree Chocolate Chip Cookies

I think it has been quite a while since I baked chocochip cookies. I received a telephone call from ds A asking me to bake him chocochip cookies cos if I'm not baking them then he'll buy a box of chocochip cookies to eat. Ah...such a request, how can a mother refuse. So here it is ....presenting my chocochip cookies and I adapted the recipe from Zu's blog.

Ingredients:

125 gm softened salted butter
1/3 cup loosely packed brown sugar
1/3 cup caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 large egg
2 cups self-raising flour
100 gm mini chocolate chips
1/4 cup evaporated milk

Method:

Pre-heat oven to 180 degree C.

Cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy.

Add vanilla and egg and mix till well combined.

Add the flour, chocochips, and milk and mix till a dough form.

Scoop a tsp of the dough, round them in your palms before placing them on the baking tray lined with greaseproof paper. Leave a three cm gap between dough balls.

Bake for 10-15 mins or until cookie top browns.

Allow cookies to cool before placing them in an air-tight box.

This recipe can make about 60 pieces of cookies.